Time was not the only obstacle to getting this show on the road. 'Barry's based in California and I'm in New York, and for us the best time is when we sit down together. Barry and I tend to write impulsively, our greatest creative ideas happen together when we're around a piano,' he says. 'Barry was in Australia at one point and he rang me from his hotel and played a tune down the phone to me,' he recalls, dismissing the difficulties of such an arrangement.

'Even when we think the script is finished, there are usually endless changes, as with any show, even during the run itself. The scary part is when all the scenery, equipment and lights are about to be set up - then you have to give up all your power to people who know what to do.'

The costumes also have to go together with the stage design, and this is where the design company, Imagination, came in. They were asked on September 10th to set initial ideas on paper. 'I can remember the date very well,' recalls Jeremy Sturt, the design co-ordinator at Imagination. 'Two weeks after that I had a meeting in America with the production team to go over the proposals.' Then the Imagination team worked on those ideas, trying to work within a budget. 'Drawing up design proposals that everyone was happy with took about four to six weeks,' says Sturt.

Once the design has been finalised, the process of making the show a living thing follows; engineers and technicians are called in to take those plans from the paper stage to reality. 'Once that was done we did a dry run in the theatre, using all the equipment and the scenery changes, and worked out the timing. This was to iron out any problems and then the exact timings and directions were transfered to the computer.'