My year in theatre

Hello, welcome back! As I said in my last post, this week I am going to be talking about my year in theatre. Okay, you are probably wondering why? Well the year, as well as the decade, is almost over so we have reached a period of reflection, most people at this point would chose to reflect on the decade. I won't because too much has happened for me to fit into even a series of posts.

Last January I decided that instead of writing New Year's resolutions (lets face it, most of us like to write them but hardly any of us actually stick to them)  I was going to set myself 2 manageable challenges, I say "manageable" because the problem with  New Year's resolutions is that we often set goals which are too difficult for us to achieve or we don't factor in the unpredictability of life.

Anyway I came up with the idea of trying to read 100 books in a year because I was brainstorming out loud and someone told me I couldn't read more than 25 (which for some people is a lot but I'm a bookworm so that isn't much). I am not naturally competitive. Stubborn, yes. Competitive? nope, unless you chose to challenge my intellect or my geeky/nerdiness. When this person challenged my inner bookworm, my mind was set, I was absolutely determined to prove them wrong. Slight sidetrack there but trust me, it's relevant.

If you couldn't already tell, my second challenge was to see as many theatre shows as possible in a year. Why? because I was a theatre student and there is a theory that the more shows you see, the more theatrical techniques/ inspiration/ideas you pick up. Also, I have been lucky enough to have collectively seen a lot of shows over the years but I usually only see 2 or 3 shows in a year. I had aspirations to perform on the West End for a lot of years, fate had other plans and I am no longer well or able to perform on a stage so that dream is dead. I have plans to do a post in the future saying  goodbye to 13 years of acting/performing...Wow I am so good at getting sidetracked. I swear I'm going to get into the main part of this post right now. STRONG LANGUAGE ALERT!!!


This year I have been fortunate enough to have seen 18 shows. I think I know what you are thinking, "OMG that's a lot, how could you afford all of those?" First of all, student discount, second of all, amateure productions (in a few cases), third of all, gifts. Some of you may be wondering if I buy/keep theatre programmes, yes and yes, I also keep tickets/ticket confirmations and any show merch/things the actors hand to the audience.

I bet you can't guess what I'm thinking whilst I'm writing this...how the heck am I going to fit 18 shows in a single post? I honestly have no idea so I guess we will find out together.

 Pre- warning, these shows are going to be organised by month not day. Another thing, as usual, I am going to be blunt about my opinions and this time I will also be talking about the theatres themselves as well as the productions. SPOILER ALERT!!! MANY SPOILER ALERTS!!

Let's travel back in time to January of this year (2019), I was able to go up to London to see "The Unreturning" at the Theatre Royal Stratford East. Would I recommend this theatre? Sure, if you like to travel around via the underground and don't mind absolutely shit legroom, be my guest. I will say the view was really good but that may be to do with my tickets or the smallness of the theatre itself. I had high hopes for the show as it was being performed by the company, Frantic Assembly, which bases itself around a combination of physical theatre and naturalism. It delivered! It was very moving and made me cry at a few points. In case you were wondering, it is for an adult audience, I think the age recommendation is 12-13 ish but I would say that a person should be at least 14 if not older to see this purely because of some of the triggering subject matter and striking sound/lighting effects.

I was also able to see "Twelfth Night" and "Art" at Chichester Festival Theatre (CFT)  in January. I absolutely love CFT, you will hear a lot more about the theatre itself and behind the scenes when I do my post about acting.

Overall thoughts about the shows: "Twelfth Night" is my favourite Shakespeare play and the performers did it great justice. "Art" was absolutely hilarious, I was crying tears of laughter throughout the show, three acting legends were part of the show, which made me feel a bit starstruck and I felt inspired/stunned by Stephen Tompkinson as he did a 10 minute monologue in character without so much as a stumble. I am going to say that this type of comedy is a really "hit and miss" so whether or not you would find it as funny as I did depends on what type of comedy you like.

Moving on to February. That month I only saw one show,"Leave to remain", it was playing at my all time favourite theatre, the Lyric Hammersmith and was a gay musical. It sucked because of the length and the music itself. Some songs were really good but other songs were just painful to listen to. The story itself was really cute and I was rooting for Obi and Alex to get together and live in fabulous rainbow happiness. It was ruined by unnecessary scenes, a soundtrack on itunes sung by one person who wasn't even in the show and it looked more innocent on the website than it was. Put it this way, don't bring your parents to see this show. I brought my mother to see it and she is seriously liberal (she took me to see Priscilla last year, we like watching LGBTQ+ love stories together and for the past 2 years we have participated in pride parades together) but we both felt awkward watching Alex and Damien snort drugs on stage.

March does indeed come in like a lion. I saw "Noughts and crosses" at the Theatre Royal in Brighton and "The Great Gatsby" at Gatsby's mansion in London. It was the best month for my bookish side to be unleashed. Let's tackle "Noughts and crosses" first. The company did the book great justice and I had the same reactions as when I read the graphic novel and the book. The set was clever and the scenes were brutal to watch, which was a good thing as the story isn't light hearted, the characterisation of Sephy and Callum was perfect and I honestly felt sick watch the hanging scene because it looked so realistic. I think this one is okay for anyone who fits into the YA bracket and older, although it is a quite a triggering show so please bare that in mind.

I honestly can't recommend "The Great Gatsby" enough, I have so much to say about this show that this will end up being a future post. Brief thoughts being, it is still playing, there are still tickets, go and see it!!!

April was a weird month, not gonna lie. I had been studying the book "the strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson for about 6 months ish? maybe longer? and, thanks to a combination of Google and Youtube, discovered that a university group was performing the musical at the Alexandra Theatre in Bognor Regis. Tickets were dirt cheap and I honestly would have paid a lot more. The production was good quality, I still haven't figured out how the transformations worked and the songs were breathtaking. I have one major nitpick: it didn't stick to the book, to the point where it could be seen as a stand alone story. This didn't ruin it for me, I still enjoyed the show however it really didn't help with revision at all. This one is definitely suitable for families with teenagers, it wasn't as scary as the book intended it to be but it still had violence in it and Hyde...I'm not sure how to quite describe him, which is good because his character fit the book perfectly.

This was also the month that I saw "The comedy about a bank robbery", I spoke about it briefly in my last post so I'm not going to say too much more about it. It was freaking hilarious, kinky in places and dark in others. Put it this way, I would recommend it to most ages because I think some of the jokes would go over children's heads however there is no escape from the only dark scene, in which one of the characters gets eaten by a fan whilst in a vent. The special effects are really cool and I really like the story's unexpected twist ending. I enjoyed this show so much that I bought a copy of the script. Yes, I am that person and yes, I am proud of it. #embraceyourinnergeek

Now we reach May, which was another weird month. In case you were wondering, I classify a weird month in terms of theatre as a month in which you see different theatre extremes. In this case, I saw "the odyssey" ,which was the very first show produced by the company "All Greek to me", at Brighton Open Air Theatre (BOAT). This show will forever be special to me as it signifies my independence because it was my first time seeing a show by myself. Despite it being an ameteur dramatics production, it was anything but amateur. It was abridged for obvious reasons but it got the basic storyline pretty accurate, the costumes were simple but effective and I loved how they used a towel/sheet to create the Trojan horse. It was very amusing and it felt really nice to watch matinee whilst eating a picnic lunch. Nothing compares to open air theatre and I plan on seeing more in the new year.

"Dead dog in a suitcase and other love songs" was just...a lot. I saw it at the Lyric Hammersmith, also in May, and it was performed by my all time favourite company, Kneehigh. For those of you who don't know Kneehigh, they are a company which specialises in physical theatre combined with live music. I have to admit, guns on stage make me scared and yet I see a lot of shows with guns in them, I'm not sure why. Either way, my heart was shattered when the dog was shot, I don't care if it's a puppet, if you kill a dog on stage or bring out an already dead dog, expect a lot of tears. The show was the most political show I have ever seen (I really don't like politics in general) but I was able to overlook that because of the breathtaking music and special effects and puppets. The ending is by far the most dramatic and awe inspiring I have ever seen. Six words, enormous skeleton dog, explosion, violin. The show put me on edge and yet I loved it to the point of creating fan art. This is a show that couldn't be more relevant to our current society/politics and is definitely for an older teen/adult audience.

Surprise, surprise, I saw nothing in June.

In July I saw two romantic comedies. The first of these being the midnight showing of "A midsummer night's dream" at The Globe. It was amazing, the cross dressing/pantomime esque style worked really well, the donkey, which Titania falls in love, with wore a pinata with a recorder dangling down made the sex jokes even funnier and the design of the show was by far the most imaginative version I have seen so far (I have seen a midsummer night's dream 3 or 4 times). I would rather stand in the rain for two and a half hours than sit in the sheltered seats. I've only sat in the seats once and I swear never again, the reason being that the actors interact/enter with the standing audience more. Not only that but the standing is what makes the theatre special, you can meet all sorts of people. Whilst waiting in the que for the gates to open, I ended up talking to the woman in front of me, she turned out to be an american university student studying medical science over here in the UK. We ended up entering the theatre together (I know which entrance offers the best standing view) and stood next to each other during the performance, we even ended up geeking out about the show during the interval and hugged each other goodbye when the show was over. That is the kind of experience that you rarely get in the seats. I have to admit, for me that isn't strictly true, I meet a lot of people when I see shows. I must also say that even though I got home at stupid o'clock the next morning, nothing compared to the midnight showing, it was indescribably magical.

On that note, I also got the chance to see "Waitress" at the Adelphi theatre. Any show that offers sweet pies in mini jars as an interval snack during the interval is a winner for me, I ended up devouring an apple pie alongside a girl I met, who travels around a lot because her father is in the army, and talking in German. We shared each others pie, she had a chocolate one and it was divinity, we lost contact after the show (it usually happens so at this point I'm not too bothered by it) which was a real shame but it was still really awesome meeting her. I also happened to meet a girl from Australia and we are still in contact with each other. Moving on to the show itself,  Blake Harrison played the role of Oggie and Ashley Roberts played the role of Dawn, honestly I think it was by far the best casting. They really made the roles come to life. Lucie Jones's voice was beyond amazing and it harmonised perfectly with David Hunter. I think Peter Hannah often gets overlooked because he plays the role of Earl, who is such a dick, but I think that he is an incredible actor because of the fact that he is able to make the audience hate Earl. This production is seriously good for all ages, go and see it, it is really good. Listen to the Broadway cast recording as well!!

Now we hit August, when I saw "Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!" at CFT. This production was a tenderly brutal watch. My general rule of thumb is to see shows with people wherever possible and to avoid seeing shows with violence in them unless I am with someone. My "friend" backed out 2 days before I was due to see the show so I desperately searched for someone to go with but didn't have any success. I decided to go anyway and it was a 50/50 decision. I met a really friendly girl there who it turned out, was sitting in front of me and we ended up talking before/after the show and during the interval. The show itself was seriously outdated because it was written in 1930's America, which meant that it was really sexist and racist. The blatant sexisim and racisim made me feel really uncomfortable but the songs, stage and dancing was mesmerising. I can't stress enough how good the music was, my favourite song being "Kansas city".  Overall, I think that like with The Great Gatsby and Of Mice And Men, you have to take it with a spoon of salt as well as remember when it was created. Do I like the prejudice? I believe in free love and equality no matter what, so fuck no!! Do I like the musical? I am torn, I love the singing and dancing but the storyline absolutely sucks. I think that this show suitable for adults and teens.

September rolled around and I ended up getting standing tickets to see "As you like it" at The Globe, what can I say other than I love a Shakespearean romantic comedy. It was funny but honestly as much as I thoroughly enjoyed it, it wasn't memorable, which really sucks.

In October I saw "Amélie", I did an entire other post about it so if you are interested in my thoughts, search on my blog for the only post with a French title.

November was by far the best month for shows. I was able to see "The play that goes wrong", that is also a post on this blog under the name "The play that goes right" if you are interested in my thoughts about that production. I was finally able to see "Dear Evan Hansen" at the Noel Coward (I bought pre-release tickets back in February) and it was the third best show of the year (Amélie takes first place and The Green Fairy takes second place). I came out of the theatre with a phenomenal sense of hope and it made me feel like I wasn't alone in the world. Despite the tragic subject matter, it is seriously uplifting and I love the healthy approach it has towards mental health. Honestly it couldn't be more relevant to our society and it is a show that everyone needs to see, it addresses taboo subjects and shatters the barriers we put up. That being said, if you can't see the show, listen to the Broadway cast recording or read the book. Yes, you heard me right, there is a book, go and give it a read (I discovered the show through the book).

Now we have entered the realm of the last show of the year, "The Green Fairy" at The Union Theatre. Sure the theatre was small as heck (there was only 6 rows of seats)  and was attached to a coffee shop in the back of beyond but any coffee shop/theatre which displays rainbow flags is an automatic winner for me. The small space worked surprisingly well because it made the show feel more intimate. The actors were incredible, I am really stunned that the show didn't run for longer than it did considering how amazing it was. I really wish that more people could see it because it is such a diamond of a show! Vocals were beautiful and the storyline was a masterpiece. I really hope that the show comes back and I feel so lucky to have been able to see it. I felt inspired artistically and it gave me the confidence I needed to fix a bad situation. I can't stress enough how much I wish for others to have been able to see it and how much I long for it to return to the stage....

As of December I am not seeing any shows other than what I can find on Youtube (which is a surprising amount). As of the new year, I am seeing Heathers in May but other than that I'm not sure, hopefully I will be able to continue seeing shows.

Did you see any shows in 2019? Which shows would you like to see in the future? Are you planning on seeing any shows next year? Do you like talking to people at the theatre? Please feel free to leave a comment and we can all belt out our favourite songs and look forward to the future of theatre.

That's it for now, thank you so much for reading, if you made it this far congratulations! If you skipped to the end, honestly fair enough. Stay tuned as the next discussion will be about my year in books.