"Can I check your bag?" asks the bag checker as I struggle with my umbrella outside the doors to The Other Palace.
I shove the wet umbrella under my arm and open the bag for him.
For once, it's not bursting to the brim with spare shoes and the results of various shopping trips. I'm almost not embarrased to have someone looking inside. Until I spot the constellation of cough sweet wrappers floating on wave of the general mess going on in there.
Oh well.
The cough sweet wrappers don't seem to bother him, and he waves me inside.
"Ladies and gentlemen, the house is now open for Reputation," says a disembodied voice.
Gosh. That was good timing. No hanging around here tonight.
I make my way over to the small podium that serves as the box office.
Yup. I actually invested my coin in getting a proper paper ticket this time around. I may have baulked at the fee for receiving such an honour when I was here for the main house, but as it's my final trip to this place, I figured I should see what one pound fifty actually buys me.
A queue forms for the stairwell down to the studio, and the box officer steps back from her podium in order to check tickets.
I wait, ready to launch myself into any gap in the line, but if anything, it keeps growing.
I stand there, awkwardly, wondering what I should do.
"No rush!" calls out a front of houser. "Plenty of seats for everyone."
That immediately sends me into a fit of anxiety. I can see full well that it's not going to be an empty house down there. And while I don't mind sitting at the back for my marathon trips, I don't like be slotted into random empty spaces at the last moment.
"They'll scan your tickets downstairs, so don't put them away!" continues the front of houser.
That's all very well, but I still haven't got mine.
As a group arrives, with a ream of tickets so long it reaches the floor, I take my chance and step in.
"I'm collecting?" I say.
The box officer turns to me for the first time. "For Reputation?"
"Yes. The surname's Smiles."
"Yeah! I saw that!"
A give a humble shrug, playing the celebrity that just got recognised while doing her weekly shop.
"Do you know the postcode?" she goes on.
I do.
"Lovely. There you go," she says handing me the ticket.
It's nice enough, I guess. White with a black border, like Victorian mourning stationery. There's The Other Palace logo in the corner and on the tab. And a stern warning that patrons with standing tickets will be required to be on their feet for the duration.
I do not have a standing ticket, so I'm not required to do shit.
I turn around and join the back of the queue, flashing my ticket to the box officer when I pass her. She nods, without the tiniest hint of recognition in her features to demonstrate that we talked all of ten seconds ago. I get it. You got to play it cool and let celebs get on with their daily lives.
Down the stairs I go. There are a lot of them. Every time we turn a corner more of them appear. The walls are lined with black and white photos of glamorous looking people.
But we finally make it to the bottom, and there's the promised ticket checker, waiting on the door.
"Head to the left, please," she intructs.
Inside there's a smart bar. And right in front of it, rows of seating.
Ah. I see what they're going for here. A kind of cabaret space.
I keep heading left, not sure how far left I'm supposed to go.
I pass a corner settee, all set up with tables and reserved signs.
"Mummmm," cries a small child crawling over the sofa. "I can't believe you got the worst view in here.... I can't believe.... Mummmmm. You got the worst seats. I can't believe! Mum!"
I don't know what he's on about. They look pretty darn cosy to me. Much better than the tight-packed rows of chairs.
Past the comfy corner there's another set of chairs. And an empty aisle seat. I hurry over to it.
"Is this free?" I ask the next person in the row.
"Yes, there's one left," she says. I pause. What a strange way to word it. As if she has claimed the row, and now has a spare chair she doesn't mind getting rid of.
An old man sitting in the row behind grabs the back of the chair and starts inching it away from its neighbours.
"I don't know why they put them so close. There's plenty of space," he grumbles as he, quite literally, rearranges the furniture.
I sit down before he can shift me any further along, but that doesn't stop him faffing.
"I'm just going to pull my chair back," he announces. "No one's behind me yet."
What may happen when someone does arrive does not appear to bother him.
A bloke comes along and starts closing up the vents in the ceiling above us. Halfway through he stops and spots the moved chairs.
"Sorry," he says. "I have a minimum area I have to keep clear." He starts to move the chairs back to where they were, to an accompaniment of grumbling from those sitting in them.
One old lady insists she cannot see. He tells her she's free to move. But the chair needs to stay where it is.
She grumbles a bit more.
More people arrive. It's really full now. They look at the reserved signs sitting on a couple of chairs. They pick them up and move them, before turning around in their seats to greet the people sitting behind them.
Oh yes. I'm at one of those shows. Where everyone knows everyone, and they are all connected with someone in the show.
No wonder they feel they have the right to treat this place like their living room.
A man with a silk scarf looped around his neck steps forward, holding a mobile phone aloft. He turns in a slow circle before going back to his seat.
I'm not quite sure what to make of that. Did he, like, find a mobile in the toilets or something? Is this how they do lost and found at The Other Palace? I'm baffled.
A few minutes later he's back, doing the rounds, chatting to all the old dears who are "very excited, so very excited," about the show.
Something tells me he's the composer.
Eventually he gets his fill of attention and we can get on with the show.
We're in some sort of girls' finishing school, and all the students are super excited because one of their number has just finished writing their novel. Which, if you ask me, shows a distinct lack of understanding about girls' schools, or writers' friends, but there you go. She's written a book about a mafia boss, and yet we are still asked to believe that she is naive enough to send in her novel, with a twenty-dollar fee I might add, to some rando guy who advertised in Variety.
Obviously he steals her story, because that's a thing that totally happens in real life, and cross-continental hijinks ensue.
It's the interval.
"I love it," coos an old lady as the suspected-composer returns on his rounds. "I love it. I love it."
"It needs to be in a bigger venue," she goes on after he's left. "It needs a big stage."
That's not a criticism that would ever have occurred to me. I mean... Wicked needs a big stage. Les Mis needs a big stage. A story about a bunch of boarding school girls does not strike me as needing a big stage. Unless she means it needs more room for the pillow fights.
The moving-chair man is back. This time he wants to finish closing those vents. He bashes against my knees as he squeezes himself into my row, and leans right over me as he thwacks at the vents with his rolled-up programme.
I cringe at the way he's treating that poor booklet. No programme has ever deserved such punishment.
By the sounds of it, the back row has been having a very good time at the bar. They're giggling and laughing and chatting, and have no intention of stopping even when the lights go down for act two. They whisper and snort their way through each song, only stopping when one of their phones goes off.
"Sorry!" the owner of the misbehaving phone announces loudly to the room in general.
A few numbers later, when another phone goes off, it's allowed to ring and ring and ring.
We all twist around in our chairs, trying to find the source, but no-one’s owning up.
Up on stage, the girl wins an Oscar and everyone congratulates her for winning her case and no one rolls their eyes at her being such a damn fool. Not even once. Which is nice. I guess.
Anyway, it's over now.
I make a break for it, racing up those stairs before someone tries to move them.