The invisible elves!

This seems to be the week of recognising (quite rightly) the other half of the cause of Utopia's brilliance - namely, the behind the scenes geniuses/genii. When one only sees half of the goings-on, it can be easy to forget that there is another half, and what hard graft must be involved in it, too.

Brendan Lemon gives a round of applause to the costume crew this week, including a nice insight into the backstage world of outfits (and lots of them...). Ms Ehle's fab Shipwreck dresses are briefly mentioned, and there are some nice pics of where all these clothes reside when not on the backs of the actors.

But yes, I am sure there are more jobs and job descriptions involved backstage than us audience members have even heard of, and clearly they are all doing a practically flawless job every night to pull off such a fantastic show without a hitch.

In other news, Ms Ehle's The Real Thing co-star / London Utopian, the fabulous Stephen Dillane, is stepping foot on stage once again. Ms Plimpton meanwhile, kindly lends a hand to an animator friend.

On the goodies front...

• eBay has a The Real Thing window card up for grabs.
• The Hightide Festival auction has now closed. The signed trilogy went for £104 ($205) and the wonderful Utopia script was bought by one rouble-laden bidder for its staggering reserve of £1,050 ($2,072). Mr Stoppard's Utopia jumper unfortunately failed to sell, (as did the Shakespeare in Love screenplay, which amazes me!)