A Beastly Panto

"Just to warn you," I type out slowly on my phone, careful not to make any typos. "I'm a little bit drunk."

In truth, I'm a lot bit drunk.

I'm still at my work Christmas lunch and people keep on bringing me drinks. A Brandy Alexander has just landed next to my plate. It's disgustingly sweet.

I want another one.

It's a good thing I have to leave early. Only six hours after the drinking started.

I can still walk though. Which is good. And type. I think.

Pretty sure I can get to my next theatre in one piece too.

On the train a woman leans over to me.

"Does this train go to Catford?" she asks.

I blink at her. "Yes?" I say. I hope it's going to Catford. Because that's where I need to be.

I get out my phone, hoping she doesn't have a follow-up question for me.

There's a message from Rosie.

"I'm very much here. I'm a queue."

I read that again.

Did she just say she was a queue?

"Sorry I'm in a queue.

"I'm not A queue."

Oh good.

I was beginning to think those Brandy Alexanders had gone to my head.

I type back. "Im on the train. About ten minutes out. Wanna pick up the tickets?"

I stare at it. I can't remember how to do apostrophes.

Fuck it. I hit ‘send.’

"Yes! Under 'Smiles?'"

"That's the one!"

I keep my head bowed, trying very hard not to make eye contact with the Catford-bound lady.

"Got em!"

Thank goodness. I was worrying that I might have to slur my postcode over some poor box officer.

Now, I know what you're thinking. That if I do insist on getting drunk and going to the theatre, then I should by rights be slurring over box officers, if for no other reason than to tell you about it.

But here's the thing, I'm going to the Broadway Theatre, and I've already done the box office thing the last time I was here, so I know they are housed off in their own little room down the road. And I know it looks like it's the set of a touring version of one of Agatha Christie's lesser-known Poirot novels. I don't need to repeat the experience. Much to the relief of box officers everywhere, who no doubt have already had too many lushs breathing alcohol fumes over their counters this panto season.

On the short walk from the station I suck in as much cold air as my lungs can stand, but all that means is that by the time I spot Rosie standing outside the entrance to the Gothic horror castle that is the Broadway, my head is feeling more than a touch woozy.

"I'm just going to take a photo," I tell her, diving across the road towards the slim island in the middle of two streaming rows of traffic.

This is not going to go well for me.

From my position on the island, I can see all the children cramming themselves through the doors for a night of pre-Christmas fun.

I really need to get my act together.

A couple of photos.

A couple of deep breaths.

Back into the breach I go.

"Sorry," I apologise to Rosie. "I'm feeling a bit out of it at the moment."

I get the feeling I'm going to have to do a lot of apologising tonight.

We go in.

The foyer is packed.

Rosie goes off to find the loos and I turn around, trying to make sense of this chaos.

A little girl in wellington boots is bouncing up and down, treading an avalanche of spilt popcorn into the carpet.

Behind me, the bar as been turned into a sweet shop. The shelves that you'd expect to be laden with bottles of spirits, are now playing host to a tower of plastic tubs, filled with pastel clouds of candyfloss.

The queue is long.

But down the other end, is a large water dispenser, and two stacks of cups.

I head towards it.

A small boy is struggling with the tap and the dispenser wobbles dangerously. His dad jumps in to help, holding the dispenser steady as the boy stands on tiptoe to fill up his cup.

Cup filled, I grab one for myself. One of those big pint size ones that lairy men wave about at festivals.

I fill it to the brim, then manage to drain half of it by the time Rosie comes back.

"Want some?" I say, lifting the cup to show her.

"Straight gin, is it?"

I probably shouldn't tell her I was on the gin at noon. And that was after the morning mimosas.

We go upstairs.

Usually, when I'm taking someone to a show, I do try and get good seats. Down in the stalls, if I can afford it. Even for bloody panto.

But the stalls were all sold out, so off into the circle we go.

Shame.

"Christ," I say, sitting down. "Look at this shit legroom."

I point at my legs, which do not even slightly fit in this row.

I try twisting to one side, and manage to get myself in, but that will only work as long as no one sits next to me.

Rosie twists in the opposite direction, towards the aisle.

"Did you get a programme?" asks Rosie as we pivot away from one another.

"Shit," I say, the horror stopping me while I'm still fighting off my coat.

I had totally forgotten about programmes.

I am a lot drunker than I thought.

I wriggle out of my sleeve and dump my coat down next to me.

Although we are technically in the circle, we're not in a balcony. There's a clear line of seats going down all the way to the stage. The only differentiation, a long tech desk cutting across the auditorium.

So from our perch at the back, I have a clear view of the audience.

Little kids wave around light-up roses, for Beauty and the Beast rie-in value, and miscellaneous flashing knickknacks that don't have any apparent connection to the show. But no one has a programme.

"No one has programmes?"

"Maybe they don't have any?" says Rosie. "What kinda of panto doesn't have programmes?"

Even the amateur panto I saw last night managed to pull together a programme. Even the tiny Portobello Panto had a programme.

If the light-up rose sales figures are anything to go by, shifting a few thousand programmes shouldn't be too hard in this joint.

The lack of programmes is not a good sign.

Rosie senses my distress and asks about the other pantos I've seen.

I give a run down, finishing with a sigh. "I hate panto." I mean, I did kind of enjoy last night’s, but even so, the sentiment runs deep and can’t be dammed by a single positive example of the genre.

"Why? I love panto!"

Oh dear.

I give her my theory: if performers have to work so hard to get a response from the crowd, then maybe it's their show that needs more work, and not the audience.

"Welcome to the Broadway Theatre and to our 2019 panto," comes a voice over the sound system. Down by the tech desk I can see a woman speaking into the microphone. She gives a few of the standard rules, but then follows them up with: "to the front row, do not leave your seats in the middle of the show, due to pyrotechnics."

Ooo.

Well!

Things are looking up.

Who needs programmes when you've got fireworks!

And on that happy thought: we're off.

Silly Billy doesn't take his time teaching us his whole call and response deal.

I shrug at Rosie, but do my best to join in.

Rosie leans down and pulls something out of her bag and offers it to me.

I blink at it, trying to make out what it is in the darkness.

"What are they?" I ask, giving up.

"Macarons!"

Ooo!

I take one.

"Way too sophisticated for this show," I say, waving vaguely at the stage and spraying crumbs everywhere.

But even that doesn't manage to lower the tone.

I watch, stony-faced. Even by panto standards, this seems terrible.

As three cast members finish their barrel through a low-rent version of the Twelve Days of Christmas, involving the chucking of five bog-rolls into the audience on multiple occasions, I turn to Rosie.

"Did that actually happen?" I ask. I'm still fairly drunk. It could well have been just my imagination.

She looks at me in confusion.

"Hasn't that happened at your other pantos?"

"No!?"

"The Twelve Days with toilet roll has happened at every panto I've ever been too!" she counters.

Blimey.

Clearly, I'm sat amongst hundreds of other panto connoisseurs, because the second the Dame and Silly Billy come out with Super Soakers, people are reaching for their coats and hiding under them, ready for the liquid onslaught.

"Kinda glad we're not sitting in the front row now," says Rosie.

I nod in agreement.

December is not the month I want to be walking home in damp clothes.

An usher walks through the aisle carrying a tray of ice cream and sets herself up in the corner.

It must be the interval soon.

Thank gawd.

I'm not sure my sodden brain or tortured knees can take much more of this.

One scene stretches out after the other. So long that I fear for the ice cream that must surely be melting away in this overheated space.

But eventually, it comes. The interval.

"Being drunk does not help," I say.

To my surprise, Rosie agrees: this is not a good panto.

"Because we're in Catford, I really thought they'd be more jokes about cats."

I snort. That is by far the best joke of the night.

"It's just all impressions!" Rosie goes on.

This is true. Silly Billy is too busy showing off his catalogue of celebrities to be the sweet sidekick I'd encountered elsewhere. Instead of being simple but steadfast, Silly Billy is actually a bit of an arsehole.

"Has there at least been a slosh scene in the other pantos you've seen?"

What? "What?"

Rosie looks at me in shock. "Where they throw gunge...?" she says slowly. "It usually happens before the interval, so they have time to clean up."

Oh.

Crikey.

I shake my head sadly. There has been no throwing of gunge at any of the pantos I've seen.

Usually, I would not class myself as, well, pro-gunge, but if ever a show needed a bit of intentional mess, this is it.

Half-way through act two, Rosie perks up, clapping her hands in excitement as the Dame suggests making a cake.

But she is left disappointed as the gunge fails to make an appearance, and instead we get a return visit from the Super Soakers.

Later, it's my turn to perk up when Super Soakers are replaced by swords, wielded by some actors in very tight trousers. Which is the sort of high-quality art that could make me convert to the panto cause. But too soon, it is over, and Silly Billy is back, waving up a pile of kids onto the stage who absolutely do not want to be there.

"This is excruciating," I whisper as Silly Billy asks a small boy whether he likes the look of an equally small girl.

"This is awful," agrees Rosie. "I think I'm broken. I thought I liked panto!"

"I'm so sorry," I say, meaning it.

"You ruined panto for me, Max."

I bristle. It wasn't me! I just bought the tickets.

I had no hand in this... monstrosity of a show. And I will not be held complicit in this nonsense.

I will the curtain to go down, but I fear we are stuck here forever. The show will never end.

Kids rush down the aisle to the front, to dance by the stage.

They don't get long.

The announcer I spotted at the beginning rushes in and shoos them back down the aisle. She crouches at the end, blocking off the front of the stage. The kids carry on dancing as twin foundations of fireworks explode on stage.

And that's the end.

We're free to go.

I pause on the stairs to take a photo.

“Sorry,” I tell Rosie as she waits for me. “I just really like that window.”

“Oh! I thought you were taking a photo of the exit sign!”

Rosie is savage.

"It was long," sighs a yawning child in the foyer.

"Three hours," replies her mum.

I look at the time.

Holy shit, she's right. It's ten o'clock.

I tell Rosie this. "Three hours for panto? That's way too long for a family show. What about the children's bedtimes?" she says, scandalised.

What about my bedtime, more like.

I slump into my seat on the tube home. Not even caring as a full-blown scuffle breaks out in my carriage.

"Don't want to back down? Let's go. Let's go right now!" shouts one guy, standing up.

"Oh, you fucking Tory wanker!" shouts the second, aiming a palm at the first guy's shoulder.

The shoulder-push is returned, with an added collar grab from the first guy. "Get out of the country!"

Those sitting close by shift down a few seats.

The young woman sitting opposite me twists around to place her legs up over her boyfriend's so she can get a better view of what's going on.

"I'm here. We're all right here! Let's go!"

"Can you shut the fuck up mate? You're being very aggressive. Very aggressive. On the tube. Some people are terrified! Absolutely terrified!" he shouts, waving his arm around to indicate the rest of us, watching them sleepily.

Honestly, fighting is so much more entertaining with swords and tight trousers involved.

My Dangerous Obsession

"Bromley doesn't count, does it?" asks one of my new coworkers when I tell here where it's going tonight.

Well, Bromley does count. So much so that I'm heading back for my fourth, and hopefully, final visit of the marathon. 

The Churchill Theatre looks different in the dark. The tall grey walls are lit up with turquoise lights, but veering off the high street and into the little square that the Churchill calls home I find that the scaffolding is still up.

Not much of a surprise that, I was only here last month.

And there's still an usher on the door. Two of them this time.

Except this time they're not just welcoming people in. Oh no. 

"Hello loves!" says one of them with a wide grin at to a couple of old ladies rocking up ahead of me. "Dangerous Obsession?"

They nod and giggle and confirm that they are indeed there to watch Dangerous Obsession. 

He presses on, still in full cheeky chappy mode. "Would you like a programme?" 

Turns out they don't. But I would.

I go over to the other usher and ask if I can get one.

"Of course! That's three pounds."

I reach into my bag, trying to find my purse. Not overly keen on getting cash out while we are still, effectively, standing in the street, but if that's the way things are played in Bromley, who am I to question it?

"Sorry, big bag," I apologise, as the whereabouts of my purse continues to allude me.

"I love your coat!" says the programme seller, a compliment borne more of a need to fill the awkward silence than genuine admiration, I'm sure. But I appreciate it all the same.

I do rather like this coat. It's massive. And fur. And the sleeves have tiger stripes on them. It makes one hell of a statement, although exactly what it's saying, I'm not too sure. "Don't sit next to this woman," probably. Unless you want to be squashed, of course. I am rather large while I'm wearing it.

"Thanks," I say, humbly. "It's very warm. I almost fainted on the train. Do you have change for a tenner?"

"A ten? Yes. Better to be too warm than cold."

"That's true," I say as I feed a ten-pound note in between her fingers.

She hands me a programme. "It'll be coins," she warns, bringing out her plastic wallet of change.

"That's okay," I say, trying not to show my excitement. "I need coins." Especially in the form of pound coins. I fucking love pound coins.

She counts of the change and pours it into my waiting palm.

"Thanks!"

"Enjoy the show!"

And with that done, I'm inside.

No need to stop at box office. I already have my ticket. They gave it to me the last time I was here. Little bit annoyed by that, to be honest. I don't go asking for tickets to be 'care of box office' just for me to be given one early, which I then have to care for myself, for an entire month, through a damn house move, no less, and then bring it right back to Bromley, when it could have stayed here quite nicely.

Plus, and I'm being really real here, I was kinda hoping for an upgrade. By the looks of things, the circle ain't too sold tonight. The kind of not sold that would usually have a circle closed off and everyone bumped down to the stalls. But hey, sometimes when you play that game, you lose.

I look around for which door I need, and I find it, pressed right up against the box office.

There's no ushers inside by the looks of it, which might go some way to explaining why this place has no qualms with keeping an empty circle open.

There's a bit of a platform right at the back, which I imagine is space dedicated to wheelchair users, but I use the opportunity to survey the auditorium.

It's red. Not the classic theatre red of, say, the Bromley Little Theatre. Or even the glossy expensive red of last night's theatre, the Prince Edward. But a brownish sort of red that I feel could only have been dreamt up in the seventies.

I traipse my way down the steps to the front row. Row AA, as it happens.

Never seen that before in a circle.

Not one with fixed seating anyway.

AAs and BBs and the like tend to be reserved for the slips, or assigned to extra rows when they are added for, I don't know, when the orchestra pit isn't in use.

Perhaps the person charged with labelling the rows up here just got overexcited.

I'll give them this though. The legroom is amazing. Got space for my oversized coat and my oversized bag and my awkward legs. Doesn't look like I'll be needing it though.

The front row looks pretty empty. Just me and a group of three ladies sitting further in.

I decide to make full use of this and spread out, putting my bag on one seat, my coat on another, and me in the middle.

Elbows on armrests, slouch down: bliss.

And from this angle, the railing that should by rights be restricting my view is no problem at all.

I don't think I've ever been so comfy in a theatre this entire marathon.

But before I let myself drift off into a theatre coma, I should probably take some photos. I lean forward to see what's happening down in the stalls. it looks filled enough with people.

Bunch of mugs.

They may have the superior viewpoint, but look at them all crowded together, fighting over who gets the armrest, and with nowhere to put their coat.

The ladies down in my row have slung their jackets up over the railing.

Up here the seats come with built-in coat racks.

Just as I'm about to sink into my own smugness forevermore, the house lights go down, and the huge red velvet curtain rises.

We're in a conservatory.

Angie Smith's Sally Driscoll appears, wearing a rather fetching swimsuit.

The audience stirs. Someone lets out a loud breath which might have been an attempt at a wolf whistle.

As she potters around, I marvel at her ability to wear a towering set of wedges when there is literally no one else around to show off to. If I'm ever wearing heels I make damn sure I have an audience around me. The thought of falling over and embarrassing myself is the only thing that can keep me upright.

But she's not alone for long. Michael Sherwin's John Barnett soon comes knocking, unannounced and unexpected. The pair of them met once at a conference thing. And now he's turned up. For reasons.

Reasons that don't even come to light when Mark Huckett's Mark Driscoll comes home. Nor when the gun is brought out, complete with dumdum bullets, which are apparently, like, super dangerous.

Anyway, despite the run time behind hella short, and the second act following on directly after the first (yes, I read the programme), they manage to put a twenty-minute interval in the middle of it all. A decision I'm not wholly behind, considering I've got to get back to Finchley after all this.

I'm too comfy to move. I stay in my seat for the interval.

Almost everyone else does too.

This is not an audience that is keen to run off to the bar anytime soon.

The twenty minutes count down.

Doom-laden music fills the auditorium, and we are sent back to the conservatory, exactly where we left off.

Somewhere outside, down at stalls level, I can hear voices. They're definitely coming from outside. I can tell, because they sound young, and enthusiastic. Not like anyone in this theatre tonight.

The young people whoop and call out to each other, unhindered by any thought as to who can hear them.

Up on stage the actors press on, and eventually, the young people disappear off to do their young people things, which clearly does not involve hanging around the Churchill Theatre on a Tuesday night.

The walls of this place must be super thin. Last time I was here, down in the studio, I spent my interval listening to what was happening in the main house.

And now I'm getting the reverse.

I think of that lady I got talking to on my last visit, and how she said it wasn't usually like that at the Churchill.

Clearly the shenanigans are kept down in the studio.

All the serious business happens in the main house.

Even if they do give the seat rows weird names.

The audience gasps as we're treated to get another plot twist. They're coming faster every time. Barely giving us the chance to recover before the next one is launched at us. And just before we're twisted out, it's over, and we're applauding.

The house lights are up, and I am back up the stairs before the rest of my circle-dwellers have even got their coats on.

The usher on the front door hurries forward to open it for us quick-footed folks.

"Good night, sir," he says to the eldery gentlemen who just managed to beat me.

I scoot out behind him, clutching my massive coat tight around me hurry through the square, checking train times as I go. It's barely 9.30pm. With any luck, I'll be in bed before eleven.

OK Boomer

I have exactly seven minutes to get off this train, navigate my way through the station, get myself over to the theatre, pick up my ticket, and find my seat.

It's fine. It's all totally fine.

And so not my fault. How dare you.

I left a good hour ago. For a journey that Citymapper assured me could be done in thirty-eight minutes. So you see, I was being responsible. Leaving extra time. Just in case the District line was being... well, it's usual District line self.

What Citymapper failed to account for, was me getting on the Westbound train, instead of the Eastbound one which I should have got on. Because I just started a new job and I'm a little sleep-deprived at the moment and pretty much working solely on autopilot right now.

So you see: not my fault.

It's pelting it down as we pull into Richmond.

The exit to the station is clogged by crowds trying to escape the downpour.

"Oh for gawd's SAKE," I growl at a group of shoppers blocking me in and forcing me to climb over their mountain of bags.

But I'm out.

Shaking my umbrella into life with one hand and bringing up Google Maps with the other, I splash my way through the puddles, not waiting for the lights to change before crossing the road. I duck and dive between slow-moving pedestrians, and jump over a very small dog who is too busy delicately sniffing a lamppost to notice the woman in a too-short velvet dress and a grim-expression baring down on him.

Round the corner. And the next one.

Is this it?

That's a fucking fancy building over there. All red stone pillars and carvings everywhere. Definitely a Frank Matcham building if ever I saw one. There can't of been two architects like that. The whole city would have collapsed under the strain of excessive twiddly-bits.

Just time for the quickest of photos then I'm running up the stairs.

A front of housers steps out, blocking my way with a smile.

"Do you have your ticket on you?" she asks, her cheerful expression only faltering slightly at the sight of my red and puffy one.

"No, I'm collecting," I tell her.

"Just this way please," she says, pointing the way down to a sunken box office.

I trot down the steps and go over to the counter.

"Hi! The surname's Smiles?" I tell one of the box officers.

He finds my ticket in the ticket box and looks at it carefully.

"We put you in the Dress Circle," he tells me.

"Great!" I say enthuasitically.

"We've closed the Upper Circle today."

Oh. Well, that's not so great. But between you and me, I was rather counting on it. When I booked my ticket, the seat plan didn't look all that full, so I took a punt and bought myself the cheapest ticket I cound find. Twelve quid. Well, sixteen and a bit once you add all of ATG's outrageous fees on top. But still, not bad for third row in the Dress Circle if you've got the nerves to play that game.

He hands me a pile of tickets. My original one, with the receipt and all that attached. And the new one. Comped through, with my name handwritten across the top.

Back into the little foyer and up towards the stairs. No time to stop off at the merch desk. Go directly to your seat. Do not investigate the existence of programmes. Do not pass go.

"Just this way please," says one of the front of housers positioned on the stairs when I show her my ticket.

She has the poshest voice I've ever heard in my life and I feel my legs processing the instruction before my head has even got a handle on them.

Up more stairs and then into the auditorium.

I have a general impression of... Edwardian exuberance. But there's no time to take any of it in. Down to row C, and an apology to the woman sitting at the end.

"I knew there'd be another one," she sniffs disapprovingly as if she'd been waiting for me to turn up.

"Sorry," I say again. "I got caught out in the rain."

I have no idea what that excuses, but it's what I had so I went with it.

I move along the row and find my seat, dumping my bag and umbrella in relief.

The man sitting near me dives forward and grabs the glass of beer I'd nearly toppled.

"Oh, sorry," I say.

"No, no. It's all me," he says.

I don't argue. It is kinda all him. We have a whole seat acting as buffer between us. There was no need for his beer glass to be sitting there.

Finally, I can sit down and catch my breath.

I look around me.

Usually when I'm in a Matcham theatre, I fall to the cliche simile of saying the place looks like a wedding cake. But ain't no-one getting a cake like this made for them unless they have HRH in their name. There isn't a single inch of wall that isn't covered in decoration.

Fat babies line up above the curtain swags to hold up garlands of flowers.

The boxes either side are topped by chubby faces sprouting wings out of their necks.

Ladies who haven't quite mastered the art of pinning their togas also demonstrate a lack of understanding as to how to play a tambourine, lifting up their arms in very elegant, almost balletic gestures, while their instrument sits uselessly at waist level.

Elsewhere, a skinny bearded man wearing a crown, stares at a woman's arse, which I'm sure is a reference to some myth or other, and not just Matcham getting overexcited.

All of this is topped by a stone plaque proclaiming "To wake the soul by tender strokes of art," which if you ask me, doesn't explain anything. What on earth is doing the stroking? Is it theatre? Or the skinny bearded man? The plaque does not say.

The lights flicker around the auditorium, and then go out.

It's starting.

It's 1947 and sadness snaps at the heels of everyone who made it through the war.

"Can you see?" a man whispers in the row behind me.

"Yes," comes the reply. "Can you see?"

"Yes, yes. I can see."

As if this exchange wasn't pointless enough, the man then leans over to the next person in their group. "Can you see?"

After a bit of back and forth, it's established that they can all see, and we can get on with the business of being stroked with art.

From what I understand, Night Watch is an adaptation of a Sarah Waters novel, so I'm sat here waiting for the gay to start and... yup. There we go.

You know, thinking about it, I haven't seen many lesbian scenes on this marathon. This might well be my first. Even when going to plays that are specifically pitched as 'gay' it's always been of the male variety. There just doesn't seem to be that much lesbian-action happening in theatre. Which is a shame.

Down my row, there's a great rumble. A snore.

I look over.

The lady who was all pissy about my turning up not-late is asleep. Hands clasped in her lap. Her head drooping forward. Snoring.

Once. Twice.

The third one is a snort so loud she wakes herself up, her head and shoulders shaking as she pulls herself back into consciousness.

Just in time for the interval.

I suppose I better go find the programmes.

I head back out to the foyer.

The merch desk is covered in piles of Waters' book. Eight pounds, according to the sign. There are also mugs, and a teddy. For reasons.

"Hi! Are there programmes?" I ask, looking down at this packed table.

"There are programmes," says the merch desker. "They're just here." From behind a stack of books, she points to a small pile of programmes. "They're four pounds."

Half the price of the original text. Honestly, when you say it like that, you realise how expensive my programme habit is.

"Brilliant!" I say, ignoring the screams coming from inside my purse. "Can I pay by card."

"Of course you can! There's a card machine just in front of you. Would you like a receipt?"

I would not.

There doesn't seem to be much else happening down here.

I go back to into the auditorium. Not many people have left. A few have made it to the back to get themselves an ice cream, but for the most part everyone is still in their seat.

My end-of-rower has got herself an icecream. I hope the sugar will keep her energy up for the second half as we are plunged back in time to 1943.

Soon enough. The snore returns.

First from the end-of-rower, and then my beer drinking neighbour.

They bat their snorts from one to the other, like a sleepy game of ping-pong.

My neighbour is the first to awake.

"Sorry, sorry," he announces to the theastre in general before slumping further into his seat.

The end-of-rower's head quivers then sinks back down into her chest.

Not sure how either of them could be sleeping. Yes, it's very warm in here. And the seats are well comfy. And it's mid-afternoon on a rainy and miserable day. But there are frickin' bombs going off on stage! Of both the literal, and emotional kind.

Good thing this lot are all a fraction too young to have served in the war. They'd have snoozed their way through every air raid.

As the applause dies, I pull on my cardie, and my jacket, and get my umbrella ready for action.

The end-of-rower has already stormed her back up the steps to the back of the Dress Circle and has fallen into conversation with one of the ushers.

"You haven't seen it?" she asks, incredulous.

The usher explains that, no, she hasn't been posted inside the auditorium during the show as yet.

"You must!" the end-of-rower goes on. "It's very good."

I mean... it's a fine story, but I'm not sure I'd be trusting this lady to provide criticism of it. If she was tenderly stroked by art, it was only to soothe her dreams.

I stop in the foyer to make some notes on my phone. Through the doors I can see the downpour and I have no desire to step out into it quite yet.

"Thank you!" calls the merch desker over to me.

Okay, I guess that's my prompt to leave.

Umbrella up, here I go.

Like Twisted Lips

It’s very very cold. And very very wet. And very very windy.

If that dark and stormy night dude, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, were still around, I’d be asking him to cover the rest of this post, but as he’s been dead a good hundred and fifty years, I guess I will just have to get on with it all by myself. Just like I have every other post on this gawd-forsaken marathon.

You might be able to tell, I’m having a bad day. And I’m in Kingston. Those two points are not unrelated. Not that I have anything against Kingston.

Other than it being a right pain in the arse to get to, is cold, wet, and windy, and is also the location of a theatre that once rejected me for a job. The theatre I’m going to right now, as it happens. No, I’m not still bitter about it. But thanks for asking.

I scurry through to streets of Kingston, fighting with my umbrella as it attempts to fly me across the road. It’s okay though. I can see it. The Rose Theatre. Just there, up ahead. Doing it’s very best to light up the gloom. I shake out my umbrella and burst through the doors, quelling the desire to shake myself down like a dog. 

The box office seems to be on the far end of a wide corridor, so I go over and join the queue. It doesn't take long for me to reach the front, so I give the lady behind the counter my surname and wait for her to pull my ticket from the box.

"And can you give me the address please?" she asks.

I give it.

She frowns.

"Shit, no. Sorry," I say, realising that I just gave her an address I haven't lived in for almost a decade. I manage to summon up the correct one, but as I walk away with my newly acquired ticket, I'm left a little dazed by the whole experience. This marathon is doing a number on my brain. Forgetting your postcode is one thing, but time-hoping back to your early twenties is quite another. I was not having fun back then. That period of my life is best forgotten and I don't want it coming up in a box office queue in Kingston. Shit be traumatic enough without that.

I pass another desk. This one selling programmes.

I join the queue. If anything can soothe me right now it's some papery programme goodness.

"There he is!"

A woman goes up to the man standing just ahead of me in the queue. They do the whole 'how are you' thing and then he looks at her.

"This is for programmes, not tickets," he tells her.

"Ah!"

She disappears.

Our queue lapses back into silence.

But the man ahead of me is restless.

He turns in a circle, almost trampeling me in the process. "So sorry," he says and then walks away.

Right.

I guess I'm next in line then.

"Can I get a programme?" I ask the programme seller.

"Sorry?" she says.

"I'd like a programme please?"

"Oh!" she says, her face clearing as realisation dawns that the person who has been waiting patiently in line at the programme desk might actually want to purchase one. "That's four pounds," she tells me.

I look in my purse. I don't have any reasonable amount of change for this transaction. All notes. And not even small ones. "Sorry," I apologise. "I just went to the cash machine."

"I'll give you change in pound coins," she says, half-threateningly.

Little does she knows that I fucking love pound coins.

Six shiny pound coins and a programme acquired, I go off to investigate what else the Rose Theatre has on offer.

Walking down the wide corridor, the space opens out into a cafe. In the centre, there's a massive fuck-off staircase which is very pleasing. While the walls are covered in black and white murals that remind me of the woodcuts I saw over in the other Rose theatre. The one over in Southwark.

The tables are packed with people enjoying pre-show drinks.

"This tea is sorting me right out," says a woman clutching a proper mug of tea between her hands.

Everyone looks the tiniest bit damp.

I take up position next to the staircase and try to work out what sort of person comes to the Rose Theatre on a miserable Saturday night to watch a play about a teenage girl who is raped, murdered, and spends her time in the afterlife watching her grieving family from heaven.

Yup, I'm here to see The Lovely Bones.

And by the sounds of it, everyone here has read the book.

Even I've read the book.

Can't say I rated it much. I read it, gosh, I must have been in my very late teens. So, hopefully, things have changed since then and I'll have a new appreciation for the story now that I'm... very much not in my late teens.

There's an announcement over the tannoy. I can't make out a word of it, but given the time, I imagine the house is now open and I should be heading into the auditorium.

I go over to the nearest door and, yup, looks like this is the right one for my seat.

I join the queue. A queue to get into the theatre.

Can't say I find myself in those all that often.

It's moving slow. Real slow.

The Rose must have the most complicated seating system in London if it's really taking this long to get people through.

But when I make it through the doors, the usher is off somewhere else and I'm left to figure out where I need to go all by myself.

I peer down at the row letters. Huh. Okay. Turns out I'm not in the stalls. Or at least, not in the stalls proper. By the looks of it, I'm in the circle of seats that surrounds the stalls. The stalls circle, if you will. I haven't seen many of those on my marathon. The Royal Opera House has one, of course. And bloody expensive it is too. And RADA has one in one of their theatres. Which are significantly less expensive. And now the Rose. Priced somewhere in between at twenty-five quid to sit at an angle to the stage.

The angle grows larger as I make my way around.

I pause, looking at a seat number, and someone makes to stand up.

"Sorry," I say. "I got confused by the three." I point at the seat number. It is a three, but something about being positioned in between a twelve and a fourteen tells me that they lost a digit along the way.

I keep going, until I'm almost at the end, and have a look at my seat.

It's a double-wide. Another thing you find mainly at drama schools.

Can't say I'm a fan of them. You know how little coordination I have. Timing your seating with the person sitting next to you is hard enough when you know them, but even if you're on a theatre-date with someone, unless you have some meticulous research beforehand, there's a good chance you're going to be sharing your bench with a stranger.

Just as I'm thinking these thoughts, my neighbour arrives, and we both grip onto the seat, half-crouching as we attempt not to ram the backs of each other's knees as we lower the seat down.

An usher comes over to talk to a sweet young couple, all of seventeen if they're a day, sitting in the row in front.

"Did we dispose of the bottle?" she says in her best headmistress tones.

"Yeah," says the boy.

"You left it outside?" she goes on.

He nods.

The usher gives them both a look, laden with significance, before leaving.

The girl sticks out her tongue at the usher's retreating back.

I love Gen Z.

Anyway, it looks like the doors are closing. I wonder if they're going to use that first line.

Blackout.

We all jump as a loud noise crashes into the auditorium.

An actor comes out.

"My name was Salmon, like the fish."

Oh.

I bloody hate that line. Put me off the whole book. "Like the fish?" Ergh.

As someone in the unusual-surname club, I disapprove of anyone who feels the need to be all twee about it like this. And yes, I know she's like, twelve or whatever. But still. Gross.

Anyway, we're off now.

The set is rather cool. There's a massive mirror over the stage. It's probably as a reflection of the duality of heaven and earth or something, but to me it's an indication of the bravery of the producer. You have to be damn sure you're going to fill a theatre if you are putting mirrors on stage, because damn, they can make a house look empty with even a few gaps in the audience.

I spend a lot of time looking at that mirror. Especially during the rape and murder scene. I know it's integral to the plot. But I've already been traumatised enough this week. The crows are still pecking away at my brain from my visit to the Kiln.

Still, the rest of the audience seems to be into it. They're giving it their all during the curtain call.

Bet they all have boring surnames and think the "like the fish” line is cute.

Ergh.

Playing the Fairfield

Four o'clock and I get a notification on my phone.

An email.

"Dear Valued Customer," it starts. My heart sinks. Being valued as a customer is never a good sign. "We regret to inform you that, due to an unexpected emergency, the theatre company have had to cancel the event 'The Hound of the Baskervilles' for this evening."

Blah blah blah. "Apologies." Blah blah blah. "Refund." Blah blah blah. "Don't hesitate to call."

This is so not what I need right now.

It's taken me nine months to find a theatre show in the Elliot Hall of Harrow Arts Centre. Nine months. And they don't have any other ones listed on their website. That's... a big problem. A big big problem.

A problem so big I can't even think about it right now.

I have to deal with the smaller issue right now. Smaller, but more urgent.

Which is, what the hell am I going to do with myself tonight?

I could give myself the evening off. Go back to Hammersmith. Wash my hair. Get myself some quality cat cuddles. But did I just mention that we're nine months into this marathon? Yeah. Now, I don't know what your maths skills are. But I, having a friggin' GCSE in it, so I can tell you that there are only three months left of this challenge. And I still have around 70 theatres to get to. I can't afford to be spending my Wednesday nights on self-care.

With an outpouring of more swearwords than my poor coworkers should ever have to listen to, I bring up my spreadsheet and start rearranging. Moving Saturday's theatre trip to Friday, I free up Saturday for a theatre I wasn't meant to hit until November. Which means, if I've worked this all out right, if I go to Sunday tonight, I can actually give myself a day off. A real one. During the weekend.

Whoa. It's been a while since I had one of those.

Right. Looks like I'm going to Fairfields Halls tonight. I better get that booked in.

I go onto their website, find the show, curse at the popup, scroll around desperatly trying to find the book button, select my ticket (front row for fifteen quid? Yes please) and then go to check out, get rid of another popup (pre-show dining? Fuck offfff).

I'm feeling more than a little pleased with myself, right up until the website decides to give me the spinning circle of death as I attempt to lookup my address.

I leave it a few minutes. Get on with some work. And then go back.

It's still spinning.

Huh.

Okay then. Close the window and start again.

Select ticket (front row, fifteen quid), put it in my basket, type in address... nope. It's not having it.

I scroll down the page and click the Continue button.

Right, now it's looking for an address.

I select it.

And then there's nothing to click.

It's just me, staring at a broken website, asking it to sell me a ticket.

I think I now know why they still have fifteen quid, front row seats, available less than four hours before curtain up.

I can't give up though. There's a free Sunday at stake here.

I try again.

Nope. Not happening.

Fuck's sake.

Two-hundred-and-thirty theatres in and I think I can safely say I've found the absolute worst theatre website.

Okay. Don't panic.

Worst comes to worst, I can call them. Box office people are lovely. That is totally a thing I can do.

If it were not for my crippling social anxiety.

I try again. But this time I'm sneaky. I make an account first, then double back to pick up the contents of my basket. Ha! It works. Success. You won't get one over me, you stupid website. I'm going to see your show and you can't stop me.

Two hours later, and I'm off to Croydon.

At least I know where I'm going now.

And, now that trams aren't a surprise to me anymore, I'm not even a little bit scared of them.

Well, maybe a little bit.

Okay, I pelt it across the road even when there isn't a mechanical monster in sight.

But I'm here now. At Fairfield Halls.

It's a lot bigger than I expected, looming over the road. Towering over building works.

Long windows running along the front give the place the air of a car showroom. We are on Park Lane after all. Just, you know, the other one.

I find myself in a narrow lobby. There's more doors up ahead, through which I can see the main foyer. All high ceilings and bright lights. There's a queue going on through there, for what looks like the press desk.

That's not me.

Over on the other side there's a reception desk. That looks more my speed. I head over.

A man stops me.

"Are you here for the Ashcroft?" he asks, and I wonder if that's the new Bentley model.

"Yes?" I reply, having absoletly no idea what he's talking about but feeling that is probably the right answer all the same.

"You can pick up your tickets just through there," he says, pointing through the next set of doors to the press desk.

I mean... okay.

I thank him and make my way over to the doors.

"Are you here for the play?" asks the woman standing on duty there.

I am.

"Can I see your ticket?" she asks.

"I'm collecting." Or at least, I'm trying to.

"Are you a guest?"

Honestly, people like to talk about gatekeeping in the arts, but I never knew they meant it so literally.

"Ah, well, you'll need to go over there," she says, pointing back the way I had come. To the reception.

"That's the box office?" I ask, just to double-check.

Yup. That's the box office.

Right then. Back I go. To the fucking reception desk.

Honestly, I'm about two seconds away from declaring Croydon part of Yorkshire so I can get the hell out of here.

"You're picking up from over here?" asks the guy from before as he sees me coming back.

"Yeah, I'm not swish enough for the press desk," I tell him.

"Ah! Well, you never know," he says, sounding embarrassed. "You can never be sure."

"Hi," I say to one of the ladies on reception, trying very hard to keep the exasperation out of my voice. "The surname's Smiles?"

She looks at me blankely.

"I'm collecting a ticket?" I press on, really not wanting to be sent somewhere else again.

"Is it a guest ticket?" she asks, sounding confused.

No, it's not a fucking guest ticket. Oh my gawwwd…

"No," I say, doing my best to keep the growing annoyance from my voice. "I bought it. With money."

"Excellent!" she says. "Do you have your confirmation email?”

I almost laugh. I'm literally the only person in this building who is a legitimate paying customer, and yet I still need to dredge out the confirmation email. I bring it up on my phone and hand it to her.

"Can you fetch it?" she asks the other lady on the desk.

I watch as the other box officer goes through the doors... and towards the press desk.

I am not a violent person, but seriously, I am about to slap everyone within a twenty-metre radius soon if... holy shit. I recognise that person. Over there. By the press desk. Picking up their tickets. Someone who used to work at my work. I now works here. At Fairfied.

As soon as I get my ticket, I rush over.

"I spied you!" I say as our eyes meet.

I shouldn't be so surprised to see her. But somehow it's always weird bumping into old coworkers.

We stand around, getting in everyone's way as I give all the gossip from the office.

"Are you here for your blog?" she asks.

Ummm.

"Yeah," I admit. "I wasn't supposed to be, but the show I was supposed to be seeing was cancelled and..." Yeah, I did it. I vented. All about the gawd-awful website.

"Oh dear," she says sympathetically. "Do you want to get a drink?"

I don't, but I keep her company as she gets one and waits for her friend to arrive and tells me all about the refurbishment.

And then it's time to go in.

Two ushers stand by the doors to the theatre wearing matching green polo necks. They smile at everyone passing through. It's opening night and everyone looks super excited about it.

I slip through and go up to the programme seller.

"Do you have change for ten pounds?" I ask.

"I'll have to give you coins though," he said, bringing out a plastic bag stuffed full of pound coins.

"That's fine," I say, trying not to show my excitement.

I'm not going to go on again about how much I love pound coins, but, you know I love pound coins.

The programme he hands me is massive. Almost as big as the ones at BIG.

Oversized programmes must be a thing at show-adaptations that no one asked for, because tonight we're seeing Angela's Ashes. The musical. Which, I don't mind admitting to you, I'm a little concerned about.

But I've got my programme, there's no turning back now. Not after everything I've been through to get here. Oh wait, wrong door. I turn back and hurry further down the corridor until I find door two. There we go. I'm in.

Front row here I come.

Except, it's not quite the front row. There are two rows ahead, but there's no one sitting in them, so they don't count.

The auditorium is large. The stage big. But it's not nearly as shiny and grand as the foyer spaces.

There's a sort of dinginess and worn-in feeling which I think is better suited to a theatre than glossy newness.

There's an announcement welcoming us all to the performance. "Please identify your nearest exit," it advises us, which is not the most comforting thing to be told to do before a show.

The stage lights go up.

The cast starts to sing.

I don't know what the first song is called, but I'm willing to bet that it’s ‘Angela's Ashes.’

I'm wincing so hard I think I might dislocate something.

But it doesn't last long, because after the initial cringe-fest, it's actually rather good.

I'm enjoying myself.

Well, 'enjoying' is probably the wrong word to talk about a misery memoir, but you get what I mean.

In the interval, I head back out. The usher on the door grins. "See you in twenty minutes!" he says.

I find a convenient pillar to lean against and edit my Red Hedgehog blogpost. I am like, stupidly behind at the moment. Four show weekends are not my friend.

"Ice cream, madam?" asks the usher on the door as I go back in.

"No, thanks." It's not really an ice cream kind of show. It wouldn't feel appropriate to be digging into a mint choc chip while there are babies howling for a bottle of milk.

But it's okay. I know our Frank is going to make it out okay. After all, he wrote the memoir. And the sequel (which is excellent by the way, although I'd bet you already know that because literally everyone in the world has read it).

But then we have to end with that Angela's Ashes song, so, when it time came for the standing ovation, I could not participate.

As I leave, everyone peels off to one side.

Looks like there's some sort of afterparty going on.

I leave them too it and head out into the tram-filled streets, thanking the theatre gods that that's me done with Croydon for the year.

Third Door on the Right and Straight on Till Morning

Well, it's happened. The marathon has brought me to Croydon.

Not a place I'd ever thought I would need to go, but life is funny that way.

And you know what? I've been here all of thirty seconds, and it's true what people say.

There are trams.

I can hear them clanging their way up the hill, with people scattering in their wake so as not to get run over. I stick to the prescribed crossings. You know I ain't good with roads. I am so going to get run over one day, and I'll be damned if it's by a trolley.

The pavements are cluttered with ads for Fairfield Halls. I can't move for seeing posters advertising their opening gala, and that Angela's Ashes musical which nobody asked for. There's even artwork painted onto the tarmac itself. They are going hard on the marketing. But that's not my destination tonight.

Nope, I keep on walking, turn into a cobbled street and stumble down a very steep hill. Strings of hanging bulbs criss-cross over the courtyard, and tables with long benches are set up under them.

It's all very cute.

This place is giving me some serious Neal's Yard vibes. The signage makes me feel like the windows should be crammed with classy blue bottles and dried herbs. Even the name is a rip: Matthew's Yard.

Except I won't be buying overpriced skincare tonight. Oh no. I've heard tell that there is a theatre lurking somewhere within. And I really hope the rumours are true, because I've booked myself in to see a play.

Inside it's all big communal tables and brick walls painted with murals. There's a kitchen advertising itself as a vegan grill, and a counter covered with what I like to call I'm-having-a-bad-day cakes. You know the kind. Ones where a single slice will cover an entire plate. And have so much icing it'll dam your tear ducts for a least a couple of hours.

What I don't see, is a theatre.

I have a wander around. There's a staircase, but that only leads halfway up a wall and no further. There's a back room with a ping pong table in it, and nothing else. And a gallery. This also leads to nowhere.

I'm stumped.

It's 7.15pm and the show will be starting in fifteen minutes. And I have no idea where the theatre is.

I look around, trying to work out which of these people are here to see a show, and which are only after the vegan burgers. Everyone is eating, or drinking, or looking really intensely at the menu.

No one looks to be ready to be watching a play right now.

My anxiety, already rumbling away in the background after all those trams, flares right the fuck up.

I bring up their website on my phone. It's not a very good website. They don't even list their events on it. Oh no, You have to go to the Facebook page for that. What they do have, however, is details about how to hire their spaces. I look at the theatre page, trying to get clues about it’s location. But there's nothing.

I do find out it's the first crowd-funded theatre in the UK. Which is nice. Not very useful in this moment. But nice all the same.

It's no good. I'm going to have to ask.

I get in the queue at the cake counter.

"Sorry, we are only taking cash tonight," says the young woman serving when I get to the front.

"Oh, no. I was just wondering where the theatre was," I ask, suddenly panicking that I was in the wrong place. There is no theatre. And never was.

"It's through there," she says, pointing to a doorway behind the counter. There's a sign hanging over it. It says: Lounge. "It's third door on the right."

I look through the door. There's a corridor going on down there. A very dark corridor.

"Okay... Do I need to check in with a box office, or..."

She laughs. "No, it's quite informal, I think."

Right... Well, here goes anything. I start walking down the dark hallway. Counting the doors on the right until I reach the third one. It's closed. Very closed. And we all know the rules of theatre doors: don't be opening them if they are shut.

But opposite there is an open door. I have a look inside. It's the promised lounge. Complete with faerie lights, tables, chairs, and even a piano.

It's deserted.

There's no one around.

Slightly scared, I go back to the cafe part and stand around, trying to think what to do.

The clock on my phone ticks on. It's 7.29pm.

My anxiety is burning up all to hell. I can't believe I came all the way to Croydon, risking death by tram, for this.

I might just go home...

A man emerges from the corridor. He's wearing a very smart white shirt. And a tie. He lifts up his arms, high above his head. The chatter in the cafe stills as we all look at him.

When he has our attention, he dramatically points behind him,

I think he wants us to follow him.

A table full of young people clatter out of their seats and go down the corridor. As does a girl who had been sitting by herself.

I follow on behind.

Down the dark corridor, and through the third door on the left. Now open.

Inside is a large room. There's a tech desk at the back. And a low wooden stage at the front. In between are rows of folding chairs, white with vinyl covered cushions the colour of sweeties. Pink and green and orange and blue.

The group all make a rush for the front row.

As does the lone girl.

I leave them too it. You know how much I hate sitting in the front row.

I slide myself into the second. Right to the end.

The man in the white shirt hops onto the stage and grooves to the music playing. A couple of girls from the group groove back at him, swaying in their seats.

A minute later, he's off again, dancing away to gather up more audience members.

He returns with two ladies. They sit in the front row too. There's one space left.

It does not get filled.

The man indicates something to the tech person. Close the door. Even I manage to understand that gesture. But the tech person doesn't, and it's left to our performer to dance off to the door, close it, and switch off the house lights.

Right, we're ready to begin.

The man is Tunji Joseph. It's his play. He wrote it. White board: Back pieces: Race in the west.

That's a lot of punctuation for a title.

But the show is slick and moves at a fast clip through stories and anecdotes and questions, and an attempt at some of the answers. What it is to be black in a white world. How it messes with self-perception and even something as fundamental as desire.

Joseph tells a story about being a student at ArtsEd (the group in the front row whoop - so we all know where they studied) and having to go on dates with classmates while in character. About being attracted to one the white girl he was out with. About getting a nod from a fellow black man in the restaurant and not knowing the meaning of the nod.

Joseph brings out a tennis ball and shows it to us.

Going over to the front row, he shows it to the guy sitting on the aisle. "What colour is this?" Joseph asks.

"Light green?" chances the guy on the aisle.

Joseph is horrified. Light green? That is literally the wrongest answer that ever wronged.

He looks around and spots me. Oh dear.

Making his way into the second row he holds out the tennis ball. "What colour is this?"

Well, if light green is super duper wrong. Then I'm going to go for the exact opposite. "Red?"

Nope.

"Does no one know what this is?" cries out Joseph, clearly distressed.

No one does.

And we get to the end of the show without ever finding out.

Joseph announces there will be a short break, and then we'll have having a Q&A to discuss the process and whatnot.

I have to say, I'm not a big fan of the Q&A. The whole "more of a comment than a question” thing doesn't really do it for me. I'm sure, out there, in the world, exists someone who asks interesting questions, but I've never heard one. I suspect the type of person who does have interesting things to ask, isn't the sort to stay behind after a show to ask them.

But I stay. I'm fairly confident that I'm the only person here who doesn't know the playwright, and I think it'll be a teensy bit obvious if I step out now.

A woman in the from row raises her hand. "This isn't a question, it's more of a statement..."

Oh gawd...

After a few more statements, and reminisces about the good old days at ArtsEd, we get to the first real question.

"What audience did you imagine? Who did you write this for?"

I sit forward. Now this I find interesting. Because this audience is hella white, and not at all what I pictured when I booked this show.

This marathon has taken me to all sorts of places and all sorts of shows. I've been in plenty of audiences where my whiteness put me in the minority, and even one where I was the only white person in the building apart from the staff, and I've always tried to take this into consideration. Sitting at the back, not taking space away from the people the show was created for. You know. I'm doing my best over here not to be an arsehole. Me doing this marathon shouldn't be getting in the way of someone seeing their art.

So the whiteness of the room I'm sat in, is surprising.

Joseph is more accepting though. "Theatre audiences are white and middle class," he says with a shrug after admitting we weren't quite the crowd he was going for.

"If you can stay, I'll see you in the bar in a few minutes," says Joseph and we all make our way out.

Well, apart from the few kind souls who offer to stay behind and tidy up the chairs.

ArtsEd should be proud.

Me on the other hand, I'm got a tram I need to not get caught by.

Back Room Brahms

I'm in Kingston!

I've only been to Kingston once before. Ooo, must be six or seven years ago now. For a job interview. At the Rose Theatre. Didn't get it. Probably for the best. It's is a trek and a half to get down here.

Anyway, I am back. And not going to the Rose. Not tonight. I am going somewhere my pre-marathon self hadn't even heard of.

RamJam Records. Which sounds well dodge to me, but there's no avoiding it. They have a play on tonight, so here I am. Standing outside The Grey Horse pub, which is a short walk from the station, and is apparently the home of this mysterious theatre.

It looks promising. There's a poster for the play I'm seeing in the window: Clara. And a sign over the gated side-entrance which say The Ram Jam Club. Looks like I'm in the right place.

I duck in between the tables out on the pavement and through the gated entrance, leading into a sort of covered outdoor corridor, filled with comfortable looking booths, each with a pair of newspapers laid out and waiting on them. The Metro. With a single HB pencil sat on top. To do the crosswords, I presume.

Down the other side, is a counter, and at the end, a woman perches, legs crossed as she sits on the bar stool, the paper open on her knees, an ashtray overflowing with cigarette ends by her elbow. She looks very content.

Me on the other hand, I'm confused. This place isn't looking much like a theatre. And while this marathon has taught me that theatres can look like pretty much anything they damn well want, they tend to draw the line at living in corridors. I mean, they could. I guess. But the sightlines would be terrible.

I keep on going, and when I reach the end, turn left, through the doors, and into the building.

This looks much more promising. There's a foyer. It's dark. Theatre loves dark foyers.

There's a door. It's painted black. Theatre loves doors. And black.

And best of all, the Ram Jam logo is painted on this black door.

There's also a massive mirror leaning against the wall. And a motorbike. I'm not sure on theatre's stance on motorbikes, but they sure love mirrors.

I think I might have found it...

Except the door is closed, and there's no one's here.

No box office.

Not even a person with a laptop.

Hmmm.

Not sure what I'm meant to do now.

I keep on going. I seem to be at the back of the pub. There's some sort of restaurant action happening, with wait-staff running around prepping for evening service.

Okay. No. Not there.

I go back to the corridor, loop around, and slip through a side door into the pub-proper.

And then I go to the bar.

I didn't want it to come to this. But needs must. I'm going to have to ask.

"Hi," I say, when it's my turn at the bar. "Where do I go for the theatre?"

The girl behind the bar points the way. "Go straight through there," she says. "Through the restaurant and you'll see a big mirror."

"Okay..."

"I think..." she checks the clock. "Yes, they should be open now."

I go through the restaurant, and find myself back in the dark foyer. With the mirror. And the motorbike. And the black door with the Ram Jam logo.

The door opens.

A young woman comes out. She rushes off. The door closing behind her.

Huh.

I guess I'll just wait here then...

Turns out I'm not the only one who's been waiting for this door to open.

Someone emerges from the corridor, and makes a dive for the door.

The young front of houser scoots back, darting after the trespasser. "We'll open any second," she tells them, as she leads them back into the dark foyer.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to storm in!" apologies the trespasser.

She and I smile at each other, and stand around, waiting for the door to open. Officially, this time.

Soon enough it does.

"You can come. The house is now open," says the front of houser, propping open the door.

So I go in.

Or at least, I try to. I only make it three steps inside the door before I'm forced to stop.

"Oh wow," I say. "It's nice in here."

And it is nice in here.

It's like a pub within a pub.

There's a neat bar set into the painted brick wall over on the left. It's laden with glass jars full of snacky things.

The walls are covered with records and album art.

Faerie lights hang from the ceiling.

Small tables are dotted around everywhere. Looks like we're doing cabaret-style tonight.

"It's cute, isn't it?" says the front of houser, grinning over her shoulder as she heads behind the bar.

I manage to stop staring, and meet her over there.

"I have to say, this is not what I expected," I say. It really isn't.

"I like it when it's like this, with the tables on the stage," she agrees. "Have you booked?"

I tell her I have, and give my name.

She ticks me off the list.

"And can I get you anything?" she asks.

I'm so taken in with the atmosphere, I find myself ordering a gin and tonic.

"House gin, or something fancy?" she asks.

"House is fine. I'm not fancy." Well... not when it comes to alcohol anyway.

But she hands me the glass with those fancy cuts crisscrossing themselves all over it, and a bottle of tonic, which I promptly set about spilling all over the bar. I grab some napkins to clean it up.

Hey, I told you. I ain't fancy.

Realising I'm making more of a mess then I'm managing to clean up, I decide to make my escape, and I take myself and my drink off to find a seat.

The front of houser was right, it is nice with the tables on the stage. Even though the stage is so small there's only space for two of them.

Instead, our focus for the evening looks to be the piano. Two long mirrors have been slung up over it, to reflect the pianist's face. But the pianist hasn't taken her seat. She stands, dressed in a long Victorian gown, sighing deeply as she pours a drink from her crystal decanter.

"Don't be shy," she says to a newcomer, as they dither about which seat to pick.

"Is it better to sit close?" asks the newcomer.

"Come close to me," says the pianist, beckoning them forward. "Welcome." And then she sighs again. A sigh laden with despair and agony.

I decide to follow her advice and pick a table near to the front. But also close to the wall. Because while this marathon may have knocked a good deal of my fear of immersive theatre out of me, I'm still not on board with the whole interaction thing.

"Don't be shy, come closer," says the pianist to the next group making their way over from the bar.

Freesheets have been left sitting out on the tables. I pick one up and give it a read. Mainly so I can stop calling the pianist, the pianist. She's Elena Mazzon. And we're here to see her play Clara.

After a list of all the music being performed, we also get a rundown of all the characters. Little two-line biographies of 19th-century musicians and composers, which is a very nice touch. I like that.

The space begins to fill up. With even the two tables on the stage now taken.

The front of houser makes her way between them, taking names from those who haven’t gone up to the bar.

"Is it okay to get two tickets?" one person asks.

"Oh sorry!" says the front of houser. "I missed you. Of course." And they go about settling the business of tickets right there.

Now that is some impressive table service going on here.

It's past the start time now. The front of houser comes up to the table next to me. The one with the woman who asked if it's better to sit close. "Did you say you were holding for two?" asks the front of houser.

The woman says yes. She's still waiting for two friends.

"Hmm," says the front of houser. "Tell you what, I'll hold for a few minutes, and if they turn up after that, they can join you."

But there's no need to hold anything, because here they are, rushing in with a flurry of apologies as they make their way through the tables to the front.

They settle down, and we're ready. Lights dim. Mazzon steps forward. She begins her story. Or rather, the story of Clara Shumann. Famed pianist. And wife of the composer.

She's been asked out on a date. In a letter. Which is a very pleasingly formal way to go about things.

There's some problems though. He's a wee bit younger (eh...) and with a whiff of scandal about him, after living in the same house as our Clara and her not-dead-yet husband.

She asks a guy sitting on stage what he does on dates.

“Kiss?” he suggests.

How very forward, observes our Clara

“What about you?” she asks the last sitting on the next table to me.

“Get a drink first?”

Mazzon nods. Yes, a drink is a good start.

She asks lady sitting at the front to keep hold of the letter.

"Don't read it," she begs. Some things are private. Even when your laying bare your heart.

And then she sits at the piano, and plays.

Now, I'll always be a Baroque girl when it comes to classical music. I prefer the precision of the 18th century, to the Romantic flurries of the 19th. But man, those cascades of melting notes are doing something to me.

Perhaps it's the fact we're sitting so close, or that we've been invited into the musician's life and heart. Or maybe it's just the gin and tonic having its way with my insides. But I am seriously into this right now. To feel the rhythms at odds with the life of their creator, the endless births and demands of being a woman acting to mute the music. To hear how a marriage between equals is impossible when society places you on two different levels. And that education and talent mean nothing to the baby crying out for his mother.

No wonder she had been sighing into her glass.

I'd be sighing too.

Perhaps the best we can hope for, after a lifetime of work, is a nice young man, with long blond hair, sending us a letter, asking us out on a date. Bonus points if its Brahms.

As the play comes to a close, we applaud.

“Okay, I'll say something” says Mazzon as the clapping refuses to end.

She thanks us. And the director, who is sitting there on one if the stage tables.

And then it's time to go.

Except no one wants to leave.

Some people go over to talk to her. One woman carries over a chair to the door to hold it open. “Let’s get some air in here,” she says.

I wouldn’t mind staying. I do like it here. But it's a long way back to Hammersmith. Time to go.

Playing with Dinosaurs

It's been a few days, hasn't it? I took a couple off from the marathon. A combination of the hell inferno, work inferno, and moving-to-Hammersmith inferno (temporarily... cats won't sit themselves, you know). But I'm back.

Turns out however, that even from my new, more reasonably central, location, Greenwich is still really, really far away. And I arrive at the Greenwich Theatre feeling a little battered and dazed.

The doesn't stop the bloke behind the box office giving me the biggest smile when I walk in though.

"Hello!" he calls over, in a manner far too cheerful for me to handle right now.

"Hi," I say, trying to conjure some enthusiasm, but really just wanting to sit down. "The surname's Smiles?"

He looks over the tickets, all laid out in regimented columns next to him.

"Can you confirm the postcode?" he asks, picking one up.

Ergh. I hate this question. Always a challenge at the best of times, but after brain melting-heats and a move which means I'm not even living in that postcode right now, I'm not sure I can answer without making use of a crib-sheet. It's like my Chemistry A-levels all over again.

But just as the silence stretches out for a beat too long, my mouth decides to take over and gives the answer my mind could not provide.

The box officer nods and hands over the ticket.

"Head over to the bar, just through there," he says, pointing off to the right.

It the same route I took to go to the main house all the way back in... gosh, it must have been right at the beginning of the year. February perhaps. One of the first theatres on the marathon. Well, in the first fifty, anyway.

Two front of housers flank the double doors, each with a pile of freesheets that they hand out to everyone walking through. That's what I like. Make sure everyone gets one.

Through the doors and onto the mezzanine that lines the sunken bar. I dump my bag on the counter and have a look at the sheet of paper I've been given. Little intro to the play, cast list, creative credits, bit of info about the company, and all the social handles. And it all fits on a single side of A4. The perfect freesheet.

Except for the lack of a quotation mark right at the beginning. There's one at the end of the sentence. But not at the beginning. But no matter. I can't judge. If you follow me on Twitter (do you follow me on Twitter, by the way? I can't remember...) you'll know I made a serious fuck-up in a programme I made recently. So fucked-up was it that I had to print programme slips, which not only served to correct the mistake, but also to highlight it to anyone who hadn't already noticed it. So like, seriously, while I may point out a typo in these things, I will never, ever think badly of the person who put them together because of it. I know how hard this shit it to make happen. And typos are just a thing that exists. No matter how many times you proofread something.

I'm very much intrigued by one role. Buried half-way down the list of creatives, as if it wasn't the most fascinating thing in the word, is a Fossil Designer. I don't know what that involves, but Hannah Snaith, I salute you for your work. Whatever that is.

I don't need to tell you that I loved dinosaurs as a kid. Firstly, because every kid in the world loves dinosaurs. It's a phase they all go through. Like the Terrible Twos. The Dreadful Dinos. And secondly, because I did most of my growing up in the nineties. And the nineties were at peak-dinosaur fandom. While Howard Carter's discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun meant that the twenties were flooded with ankh-necklaces and thrillers set in the shadows of the pyramids. The nineties had dinomania.

There was Jurrasic Park, of course. But also The Land Before Time. The puppet-led Dinosaurs sit-com. The cartoon Dink, the Little Dinosaur. And not forgetting the greatest of them all: Theodore Rex. The seminal Whoppi Goldberg vehicle which sees her non-nonsense cop paired with a new partner, who just happens to be a Converse wearing dinosaur.

The nineties really were the golden age of creativity, ending in the early 2000s with... Dinotopia. A strange tale of a pair of brothers and their dad, who crash land on an island where they discover dinosaurs and humans coexisting quite happily. Dino-riding and love-triangles insue. It wasn't very good. And the love of dinosaurs soon died out.

But of course, like choker necklaces and bucket hats, they're now back.

All those kids who grew up reading dinosaur magazines, collecting dinosaur figurines, and convincing themselves they were going to uncover a pterosaur every time they went on a school trip to Lyme Regis, are now grown up. And they're writing plays. And I'm watching one of them tonight.

I look around, trying to work out where the play will actually be. The doors to the main theatre are on the left and the right. There are no signs of the studio.

And then, from the other side of the bar area, one of the wall panels opens up, and a head sticks out. It's a door. And that's the studio. I'm baffled. I try to work out the geography of it all. I can't quite remember where everything is from my trip here half a year ago, but I think that the studio might, in fact, be right underneath the main house.

"Ladies and gentlemen," comes a voice. "The house is now open."

From the bar, there's a great scraping back of chairs as everyone makes the mad dash towards the doors. Seating is unallocated and no one wants to be stuck at the back.

I go down the steps and join the scrum, but soon find myself having to hold back to avoid being trampled by the bar folk.

There's a young man tearing tickets on the door, but he can't keep up with the number of people pressing forward.

A woman joins him, her hands working to tear tickets as fast as possible.

"The show is sold out," she tells us. "So please sit right next to people."

"No gaps?" someone asks.

"That's right. And if they don't move, you can tell them that I told you not to leave any gaps."

Something tells me that Greenwich audiences are... tricky.

Eventually, I make it through the door, and into the theatre.

It's small, but not tiny. Not by studio standards anyway. The stage is floor level. And there's a platform on one end. The platform, however, is the only concession to rake in this space. With half the seating on it. And half at stage level. I decide to go for the front row on the platform, moving down as far as I can in the row, and sitting right next to the person on the end. As instructed.

As soon as I get settled, I realise that the platform is next to useless when there are three rows right in front of it. If any of the actors decide to sit down, they will be swallowed up behind the wall of bobbing heads.

Oh, wait. Two people are sitting on stage. I can see them now. They're doing air steward movements with their hands, helping direct traffic as people come in.

"Please don't leave any gaps!" a front of houser shouts across the room. "We are completely sold out, so please move right down to the end of the rows."

Alright, love. We'll figure it out. That's the thing about theatre-goers. We like sitting down. And we'll find those empty seats. You don't need to worry about us.

But, she does worry. And the shouting continues until the last person is sat.

It's close in here. And not just because it's completely sold out. The low ceiling and dark walls aren't helping.

I get out my fan. The killer heatwave may be over, but it's still not exactly comfortable.

"That's a good idea," says my neighbour, indicating the fan.

"Yeah, I take it with me everywhere. An umbrella and a fan. Two essentials for British summers."

"I really need to get one," she says and I agree. Fans are great. Everyone should have one.

I shift slightly in my chair and jolt as I realise I'm pinned in place.

"Sorry!" says my neighbour, lifting her leg to free my skirts.

"No, it's my fault," I tell her. "This skirt is really big."

It's not actually that big. I'm not in one of my circle skirts today. But given half a chance, any skirt I'm wearing tends to floof all over the place. It's like they're trying to escape from me. Perhaps I don't treat my clothes well enough. Maybe I'll start using the delicate cycle on the washing machine.

It looks like we're starting. The two people sitting on stage, Emma MacLennan and Charlie Merriman, are getting up. They're starting a lecture. About Mary Anning.

And, no... wait. Someone's interupting. Someone coming from the back of the studio. Someone wearing a long, 19th-century gown.

It's Mary Anning. She's not having all this nonsense being said about her. She's taking over.

And so she does. And she has no intention of indulging us in words. Words lie. Words are used to twist and trick.

I’m in full agreement. Words are bullshit. I may earn my crust by crushing words into a semblance of sense-making, but I still won’t trust them as far as I can typo them.

For Mary though, it's numbers that she cares about. Numbers of bones in her first major find. The number of coins she was paid for them. And the number made in profit as it was sold on.

Pulling in the other two to play all the characters in her story, she takes us from a childhood spent picking up curios to sell to tourists on the beach at Lyme Regis, to her discovery of the ichthyosaur, to teaching herself French so that she might read the work of Cuvier, to being rejected by the establishment for the terrible crime of not being a man.

As someone who is, shall we say, feeling a wee bit raw at the moment about not getting proper recognition for my own work, I am boiling inside at the treatment our Mary got. Taken advantage of because she lacked connections, and money, and breeding, and a penis. Slogging away in the rain and the cold and the winds, so that others found glory from her work.

From her bag, she brings out tiny examples of her curios. "I think we can trust them," she says, as her ensemble try to hold her back. She hands them out to the audience, instructing us to pass them along to the end of the rows. They work themselves along, getting turned over and peered at in the dim light.

Smooth on one side. Rough on the other.

I rub my thumb along the marble-like sheen of the shiny side when its my turn. Are these real? Or are these the work of our Hannah Snaith, the fossil designer? I can't say. They're fun to hold all the same. I don't want to pass mine along, but I also don't want to disappoint Mary Anning. So I hand it along to the next person.

At the end, we're given more numbers.

Number of people in the audience tonight, sixty. Number of people who will know about Mary Anning tomorrow if everyone in the audience tells five people down the pub tonight, 300. Number of people who will know about Mary Anning by Wednesday if all those people tell five people... oh something ridiculous like 90,000.

Well, as someone who was educated in a proto-feminist girls' school in Dorset, there was no way I was getting away without learning about Mary Anning. I can't claim my blog will reach 90,000 people, but you at least now know about her. So, that's one down.

Numbers done, we're invited to stay for a Q&A with Antonia Weir, who brought the spirit of Mary into our midst, and some other people that I'm sure are very interesting, but I'm not sticking around to get even more sticky.

It's a long-arse way home from Greenwich. Even longer than a plesiosaur's neck, I'd venture to say.

I wonder how many vertebraes long the DLR is... I bet Mary Anning would know.

Mount Bussey

Back in Peckham again tonight. I honestly don’t know what I did in life to deserve this.

It’s not Peckham itself, you understand. I don’t have any ill-feelings towards the place. Or any good feelings for that matter. I haven’t been enough to have formed any sort of opinion. I am Peckham agonistic, one might say.

No, what I harbour my annoyance towards, is the transport. My gawd. Waiting on platform two at Canada Water for a train that never comes, sweltering away without even the distraction of wifi… I cannot. I cannot. And I will not, ever again. Not once this marathon is over anyway.

For now, I must suffer through.

At least my next venue is right next to the station. I barely have to trip across the road to get there. 133 Rye Lane. Better known as the CLF Art Cafe. Or the Bussey Building. I think that’s what most people call it.

Half the building is hidden behind hoarding, but there’s a poster stuck outside showing me that I’m in the right place.

I head through the door and find myself in some sort of industrial-looking corridor. With bare pipes running along the wall, and chip-board ramps on the floor.

I worry that I might have accidentally walked into some sort of sweatshop, but no – there’s bunting strung up overhead. And one this this marathon has told me: theatres fucking love bunting. This has to be the place.

“Hello!” says a very friendly voice.

I look up. It’s my co-worker. Blimey. Okay.

“You don’t live round here, do you?” she asks.

“God no,” I reply, a touch too venomously. I try to recover. “I’m here for a show,” I say, pointing down the corridor to what I hope is the location of the theatre. “Such a journey to get here…”

“Is it?” She pauses. “You didn’t come here via Farringdon did you?”

“No. Should I have done?”

“The secret is the Thameslink.”

I groan. I fucking hate the Thameslink. “I fucking hate the Thameslink.”

“It’s better when you learn the train times.”

Yes, I suppose it must be.

We part. Her to go home. Me to plunge further down this corridor.

I emerge on the other side in a small courtyard. Surrounded on all four sides by high brick walls, painted with not unattractive graffiti. I’ll admit, Peckham is a little bit cool. You don’t get this kind of location-setting in Finchley.

The door directly opposite has a sheet of paper pinned to the frame, with details of the play I’m seeing this evening. So, it looks like I’m in the right place. I go in, and immediately find myself in a stairwell.

With nowhere to go but up, I start climbing.

One floor. Then another. Then another. Turning and turning as I climb higher and higher.

And then I stop.

There’s a chain blocking my path.

“Box Office opens at 7.15pm,” it says.

It’s ten past now.

A young man in hipster glasses appears from a side door.

“You’re here for…?” he asks, his words trailing off.

“Portents,” I tell him.

“Portents.” He nods. “It’ll open in about five munutes, the bar’s through there if you want to get a drink.”

I don’t particularly want a drink, but I follow his suggestion all the same.

The bar looks like it has a day job as a performance space. There’s a massive stage down the other end. It’s dark. Candles set on top the three tables barely punctuate the gloom. It’s quiet in here. Very quiet. There’s no music playing, and the two staff members behind the bar are whispering too each other as if trying to avoid breaking the very specific atmosphere.

The floor is bare concrete. The ceiling a mass of wiring.

But there are three industrial size fans and they are blasting out one hell of a breeze.

I stand against the wall, enjoying the fiercely blowing fans and try not to creep out the bar staff with my presence. I can’t help but think I’m the cause of all this quiet.

I check my phone. Five minutes has passed. It must be time to go in.

But when I head back towards the stairwell, the chain is still very much in place.

I don’t want to go back to the bar.

I think I might sit in the courtyard for a while, but there’s someone here. A woman.

“Is there a show on now?” she asks.

I hold up my hands. “Sorry, I don’t work here.”

The young man with the glasses does though, and he’s appeared just in time.

“Was there a show here earlier?” she asks him. “My son said he was here but I can’t find him…”

Leaving this anxious woman in the young man’s no doubt very capable hands, I go down the stairs. But there’s someone coming up the other way. And she doesn’t appear to have lost a child.

She stops. “Are you here for the theatre?” she asks me.

“Yeah,” I tell her, hanging back on the landing.

She sighs deeply. I feel she’s been holding that breath for a long time. “I’ve been everywhere!” she says. “All around.” She circles her arm to indicate the scope of her travels.

“It’s a confusing place,” I say.

“I went in the other building.”

I don’t know what other building she means, but I nod sympathetically all the same.

She passes me, just as hipster glasses pulls aside the chain. The box office, it seems, it now open.

My new friend doubles back. “We can go up!” she tells me.

I follow her, and the pair of us trudge our way up the stairs.

And more stairs.

And more stairs.

She points. “Even more stairs!” she laughs.

There are a lot of stairs.

We turn one final corner, and there it is. The CLF Theatre. I know because there’s a sign, inscribed in white against a very red wall. The same colour as my face right now.

Positioned outside, there’s a small desk. And the person who must be our box officer for the evening is sat behind it.

My friend goes first, but when she has trouble looking up the confirmation email for her booking, she waves me forward.

“The surname’s Smiles?” I say.

“No, I see you!” says the box officer, finding me at the end of a very short list. “Have you got the reference?” she asks.

Gosh. That’s a first.

I pull out my phone and bring up the email. I find the reference. That’s a lot of numbers and letters. “Um, it’s very long,” I say, turning around my phone so she can see the screen.

“That’s perfect,” she tells me. “I just wanted to confirm the booking.”

Okay. Bit intense. I mean, we’re not exactly at Hamilton right now. Usually box offices just ask for a first name. Or the postcode if they’re really swanky. But okay.

My new friend steps forward. She’s found her email. And she gets a bright yellow wristband for her troubles.

Huh. I didn’t get a wristband. I want a wristband!

“Feel free to head in when you’re ready,” says the box officer.

Neither of us move. I don’t know about you, but sitting in an empty venue, by myself, really creeps me out. It’s even worse than being in a bar by yourself. The bar staff can at least whisper to each other. In a theatre, a small theatre especially, it’s just you and the tech person. And neither of you are supposed to talk to the other.

Two more people arrive. One of them is carrying a guitar case.

“Can I have a wristband?” he asks, after purchasing his ticket.

“These are for people booking the double bill,” the box officer explains.

Fine. That explains it. I don’t want a wristband then.

The boy with the guitar is interested though. “How much is the double bill?”

The box officer grabs a flyer to check. “Fifteen pounds,” she tells him.

He thinks about this. “if I were to decide I want to stay after the show, could I just pay the extra five pounds?”

The box officer smiles. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I’ll remember you.”

Not surprising, as the boy with the guitar turns out to be the chattiest person in the world, and I soon find out that he knows someone in the show, is a student, likes the box officer’s earrings, and that the box officer is not actually a box officer. She runs the theatre in Edinburgh that this show is touring to.

Well.

“You can go in by the way,” says the box officer who isn’t actually a box officer.

None of us move.

“No one wants to be the first,” I say.

The boy picks up the guitar. “I’ll go,” he announces and leads his friend through the door.

I shrug. “Alright then, I’m going in,” I say. And the four of us head into the theatre.

It’s dark in here. Darker than the bar even. Mainly because there’s a light rigged over the stage to glare into the eyes of the audience. But as I adjust to the dimness, I begin to make things out. Rows of chairs facing a floor level staff.

A wooden floor.

Right in the middle, there’s a pillar, with more dotted around, propping up the ceiling.

It’s like having a theatre set up in your neighbour’s attic.

We take our seats, all avoiding the front row. Not that it’ll make much difference. Not when there are only four of us.

My friend leans over the aisle to me. “What time does it start?” she asks. “I thought it was 7.30pm”

“Yeah, I think they’re waiting for people to turn up.”

“Like the performers, or…” she turns around to look at the non-existent audience. “or us?”

Good question. I'd meant the audience, but who knows. Perhaps the cast had done a runner.

The doors close, and the box officer (who isn’t a box officer) slips in, taking a seat at the back.

The young man with the hipster glasses reappears. He’s introducing the show. “Welcome, to all…” his eyes scan the empty seats. “Five of you.”

Oh dear.

But the play starts and the performers go on undaunted, apart from their alarming tendency to catch eyes. Not helped by the whole thing being performed from behind a set of lecturns. I swear I spend a whole five minutes locked in a staring contest with one if them.

And they’re all so young. That combined with the all black costumes. and the music stand style lecturns, and I feel like i’ve stumbled into the rehearsal for a school choir. Except they’re busy talking about secret broadcasts, lizard people, and aliens.

Not sure I have any idea what this play actually is, but it’s interesting enough, even if it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Although their leaving out of the Facebook plot to storm Area 51 in their run down of conspiracy theories doesn’t make it all feel a bit… out of touch.

Whatever. I clap enthusiastically enough when they’re done. You’ve got to admire their gumption if nothing else.

I reach down and grab my bag.

“Are you staying for the next show?” my new friend asks from across the aisle.

“No, one play is enough for me in one night...” Turns out even I have my limits.

She nods and turns away. Somehow I don’t think she wants to be my friend anymore.

Peck 'em

Between you and me, I’m feeling rather pleased with myself right now.

I wasn’t supposed to be here tonight. I was supposed to be somewhere else entirely. I was supposed to be at a brand new theatre, on opening night. But turns out booking opening nights at brand new theatres are risky things to book for, and now I have the evening free.

Now, usually this would be a cause of panic. I’d be scrolling through TodayTix, my thumb a blur as I try to find a West End theatre that I both haven’t been to, and can afford to buy a last minute ticket to. With just over five months to go before the final countdown, I can’t afford to take Saturday nights off. No way. Ain’t no time left for that nonsense. I’m going to the theatre, dammit.

But I vaguely remembered getting annoyed at the theatre not do long ago. Annoyed because for the third time, they’d put up a marathon-worthy show on their website, with so little notice I’d already booked myself in for that evening.

I checked back.

Yup. There is was. On for one night only. A play. And there were still tickets available.

Hello, Theatre Peckham! Despite all your best efforts, not programming anything of any use, and then dumping things online with next to no advance notice, I’m going to get you checked off my list.

My feelings of smugness last exactly as long as it takes me to stick in their postcode into the TFL Journey Planner.

Oh, for fuck’s sake. Peckham might as well be in the Lake District for all the transport links it has. Looks like I’ll be walking half-way across London to get to this one.

But being the brave, intrepid, explorer that I am, I set off. Battling against cancelled Thameslink trains and walking for miles and miles to fall down at their door.

Turns out, the Theatre Peckham’s laissez-faire attitude to getting shows on sale doesn’t seem to have affected their ability to pull in an audience. This place is packed. There’s a small courtyard outside of the main door, and it’s filled with happy-looking people having drinks and enjoying the sun. Inside, it’s even busier. The queue for the bar stretches out from one side of the foyer to the other, echoing the line of bunting strung up overhead.

I inch my way around the walls, trying to find somewhere where I’m not in everyone’s way. It’s tricky. There are people waiting at the box office. People waiting for the loos. People waiting beside the entrance to the theatre. People waiting for friends and drinks and the doors to open.

This place has clearly set itself out to be a community hub and it's doing it well. There’s a piano on one side, a dress up corner on the other, and even a casting opportunity notice board. No wonder they can fill a theatre with only a few days' notice.

I find a small space near a pillar and tuck myself in.

At least I don’t have to get involved with any of that. I have an e-ticket. It says right here in the confirmation email “use your smartphone to display the .pdf ticket on-screen so that the person on the door can examine and check its authenticity.” Not sure how they go about that, but I’m hoping there’s a beeper. I hate e-tickets, but I love a ticket beeper.

It’s warm in here. It’s a bit Hardwicke Hall (“more window than wall”) and the sun is blazing through the glass, heating us up like a bunch of rapidly ripening tomatoes.

Someone standing near me leans back against the pillar and fans herself.

I stare at her. That fan looks surprisingly like an admission pass.

I should have known better. Ticket confirmations are nonsense emails. You should never trust a word they say. There’s not going to be a ticket beeper. And no one is going to check the authenticity. They might have fancy pdfs to send out, but that doesn’t stop them from handing out laminated scraps of logoed up paper like all the rest of the old school venues.

I join the queue for the box office.

“The surname is Smiles,” I tell the lady behind the counter when I finally get to the front of the queue.

“Sorry?”

“Smiles?” I say, wondering if I had been mistaken after all, and the admission token had been nothing more than a trick of the dazzeling light. But no, there they are. I can see them. Piled up neatly next to her mouse. I press on. “S. M. I. L. E. S. Smiles? That’s the surname?”

She looks it up. “Just one?” she asks.

“… yes.”

She hands me a token. It’s white, laminated, with the Theatre Peckham logo, and is in no way an e-ticket.

Thank goodness.

I return to my little corner near the pillar, and soon find myself part of the queue to get in without the bother of moving.

A young man in a Theatre Peckham branded top makes his way down to queue, talking to everyone in turn.

“Sorry?” I ask when he gets to me. I shade me eyes against the sun still forcing its way through those massive windows.

“You don’t mind being filmed?” he repeats.

“Oh…” Do I mind being filmed?I mean… the answer is: yes. I do. But I’m not sure I mind enough to cause a fuss. “No,” I tell him.

He moves on, asking his question all the way down to the end of the queue.

I’m not sure how I feel about this direct approach. On the one hand it’s great that he’s making sure everyone going through the door knows that there’s going to be a camera in there, but on the other, it does rather put you on the spot more than a sign ever would.

I make a mental note to pick a seat at the back.

I check my phone.

It’s 7.35pm. The doors still aren’t open.

Oh well. At least it’s a short play.

Or is it? I can’t remember. But it surely must be. In this run up to Edinburgh, everything seems to be coming in at under an hour.

I go to the Theatre Peckham website and look for the show we’re queueing for, Sweet Like Chocolate Boy, and scroll down.

2 hours plus interval.

2 hours plus interval. What does that mean? How long is an interval? It doesn’t say. It could be five minutes or thirty or anything in between.

It’s 7.38pm and we still haven’t gone in.

Two hours

Plus an interval of unknown length.

And then the long trek back to Finchley.

I’m not getting home before midnight, am I?

The usher is back. He slips through the queue to reach a lady a few places ahead of me. “Don’t forget to sit at the top, yeah?” he says. “The back of the back of the tip of the top.”

She frowns at him. “Why?”

“Because you don’t want to be filmed, yeah?”

Her face clears and she nods. Back of the back of the tip of the top. She’s got it.

7.43pm. The doors have opened. We’re going in.

Gosh. It’s quite nice in here. A balcony circling three sides. A floor level stage.

There’s multi-coloured upholstery across the seating, which I notice are those flip-down benches which require you to coordinate the sitting down process with your neighbour.

I can see what the usher meant by the back of the back and the tip of the top.

There are a few rows right at the back that are cordoned off by a railing. I suppose they’re supposed to be considered part of the balcony, but really they look like an extension of the stalls with a wall to keep back the riffraff.

I can see the camera. It’s just there, in front of the first row.

Hopefully it won’t see me back here.

Its presence doesn’t seem to have put many people off though. The front row fills up fast. As do the second and third row.

As the seats gradually fill up, spaces gradually disappearing as newcomers are forced to go further back, I can see why. The rake… isn’t great. It’s disappointingly bad. Especially for such a new theatre. I always wonder about this. Do theatres not test the rake before opening to the public? Do they not consider that someone sitting in their seats might actually like to see what is happening on stage? It always makes me think they are just gambling on them never selling enough tickets for it to matter. And in the event of them having a hit show, for the audience to be so desperate to see it, they won’t care if their view is a little obstructed by the person in front.

It’s nearly ten to eight now. And we still haven’t started.

I suppose that says it all. Bollocks to the audience. There’ll be a show. At some point. And they’ll get to see it. Most of it, anyway. Whatever.

Oh well.

We’re starting now. At last.

Two men. Two stories. Interwoven.

All time travel and the voice of god and returning to the scene of the crime and prophets and machetes and rhyme.

A bit poetic. A bit dance theatre. A bit strange.

A bit… dull.

I mean, it’s fine. Well written. Well performed. All that.

But it isn’t doing the business for me.

Too many characters. Too much stuff going on. Too long. Too drawn out.

I’m sure the twin timelines will come together at some point, but right now… eh.

But you know, this play wasn’t created for the likes of me. And the rest of the audience seem to be loving it. Laughing at what I presume are the right bits.

The air conditioning is good though. A bit too good. It’s freezing. But I’m not complaining. Better too cold than too warm. I’m just waiting to wriggle back into my jacket as soon as the interval hits.

Just as I’m rubbing my arms to get some warmth back into them, the stage light extinguishes, plunging into darkness. The man sitting next to me lifts his hands, ready to clap. But he holds back. Is it the interval?

The darkness extends a fraction too long.

The house lights should be coming up by now.

But they don’t.

Someone at the front risks a clap, and we all follow their lead.

The house lights go up. As one, the audience gets to their feet and disappears to the bar. I reach under my seat and grab my jacket, snuggling down into its woollen warmth.

As everyone begins to filter back, they come laden with drinks and snacks. One person appears to have popped out to the shops, and his hands are full of crisps. Around five packets if I’ve counted correctly. Not quite the Dairylea Dunker of snack masters that I saw at the Stockwell Playhouse, but he’s certainly up there.

He opens up the first pack, and starts munching, tipping out the last of the crumbs just as the house lights descend for the second half.

I pull my jacket tight around me and shiver through the rest of the play, trying to enjoy the frigid chill of the auditorium, and being annoyed with myself for not appreciating the cold as much as I should.

At the end, there's a standing ovation. A little one. And not undeserved. Those actors put in the work. Jumping between characters with little more than the unzipping of a jacket and putting on of a hat.

Oh well. Time to start the long walk to Oval. There's no way I'm risking the Thameslink again.

In the foyer, I turn around to have another look. Taking in the piano, the bunting, the reading nook with it’s chair and accompanying bookshelf.

I doubt I'll be back. Not until Peckham gets a tube station anyway.

Offenbach Off

Well, this is rather worrying. Google Maps can’t seem to locate my next venue.

I type it in again. Blackheath Halls.

Nope. Nothing.

Great. Looks like I’m on my own.

From Blackheath station I turn right and start marching up the hill. I’ve never been to Blackheath before. It’s kinda cute, in that way that south London villages so often are. As if they’re always on the alert for any roaming film crews scouting for a period location. With ever street filled with shops that seem to exist solely to furnish old ladies’ front rooms with knick-knacks.

There’s a great big red brick building over there on the left which looks likely. And yup, I can see the signage now. Blackheath Halls.

Turns out it does exist. Which is a relief. I was beginning to think I might have made the place up. It does rather sound like the sort of name my brain would come up with. It’s the Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way of theatre names. I bet Charlotte Brontë only used Thornfield Hall because Blackheath was just a little too on the nose to be taken seriously.

Music pours out. Singing. The cast must be warming up. Although there is a touch of the football chant to their repertoire. I’m beginning to wonder what on earth I’ve let myself in for tonight.

I’m seeing La Belle Helene. Which I admit I know exactly nothing about.

Maybe it really does have a scene set at Old Trafford.

Lots of people are perching on the steps outside the bright red doors. Unfortunately, none of them are Mr Rochester. So I go inside.

There’s a nice foyer in here. Big and square, with the box office down on one end.

I join the queue. There are signs all over the place advertising the twin joys of programmes and ice cream. Both of them three quid. But when I get to the front, there are no programmes on sale at the desk.

There is a notice proudly promising that the show is sold out though. I wonder how much walk up business they get all the way down here…

Not sure what to do now. There’s a bar off to one side. It’s pretty big but it is absolutely rammed. I decide not to join the fray. I hang back, examining the boards full of children’s artwork.

There’s a front of houser in the foyer, carrying a stack of paper in her arms.

Freesheets! Fuck yeah!

“Sorry, is that the freesheet?” I ask her.

“It’s a synopsis for you,” she says, handing a copy to me.

“Amazing, thank you.”

I wander off to have a look at my prize. It’s exactly what she said. A synopsis of the opera and nothing more. A two page synopsis of the opera. The font is pretty big, but even so. Two pages. That’s worrying.

I decide not to read it. I’m a great believer in productions having to stand up by themselves without explanation.

Still… two frickin’ pages.

I’ve exhausted all the possibilities that the foyer has to offer. I should probably go and see what is happening in the bar.

I squeeze myself in, immediately getting bumped. First one way. Then the other. It’s impossible to move in here.

The doors to the auditorium are open and I consider going in, if only for the peace, but it’s far too early for that.

Instead I brace myself against a pillar and send a prayer to the theatre gods for their protection.

From my position, I have a good view of the door. “Great Hall. Door B,” it says. I check my ticket. There’s no mention of doors. I look back at the sign. No seat numbers. Right. It seems we’re just guessing our doors tonight then.

On the opposite side, there’s the bar.

It looks nice enough, but there are no programmes on display.

Where are the programmes? Do they even exist?

Just as I start getting rather stressed about the whole thing, a front of houser appears bearing a huge wodge of them which she passes off to the ticket checker at Door B.

Well thank the theatre gods for that.

I walk over, but someone else gets in there first.

Programmes are in high demand at Blackheath.

“Three pounds,” the ticket checker tells the man. I grab my purse and pull out the correct change while I’m waiting. I knew all those pound coins from the National would come in handy.

“Can I get one too?” I ask when the man ahead of me has gone inside.

“Of course!” she says. “Three pounds please.”

Transaction complete, I return to my pillar.

“Good evening and welcome to this evening’s performance of La Belle Helene,” comes a voice over the sound system. “The house is now open. Please take your seats as soon as possible.”

I check my phone. It’s 6.40pm. Fucking hell, calm down mate. We’ve got ages.

No one else in the bar seems to have noticed the time though, as soon there is a massive queue outside both doors and I have a nice procession of handbags to knock me as they pass by.

An old man decides to sit things out and pulls a chair away from one of the tables, ramming it into my knees as he sits down. He wriggles around, using his elbows to pummel me back into the pillar. What a twatting fucker.

“I wondered if you’d be here!”

I look up. It’s Ruth! I know Ruth. Do you know Ruth? She made a tiny uncredited cameo in my London Coliseum blog post. And here she is again!

“Have you been to any of the Blackheath Opera productions before?” she asks.

I have to admit that I haven’t. Between you are me, I don’t get on the train for opera. I don’t tell Ruth that. She is definitely the type of person to get on the train for opera.

“The soloists are professionals,” she explains. “The minor roles are Trinity students, and they have a massive community chorus.”

Well, that sounds good. I’ve seen the Trinity Laban students before, at Queen’s House, and that was… everything.

“They’ve just refurbished this place. Usually the productions are in the round, but they want to show off their fancy new raked seating on this one.”

“They even have it printed on the ticket!” I say, showing her mine.

“Raked Seating,” it says, just before the seat number.

“See you in the interval?” asks Ruth.

I nod.

It’s time to go in.

I try Door B first. “Am I at the right door?” I ask. Turns out I’m not.

Take two then.

The lady at Door A checks my ticket and waves me through into a very dark corridor. Round the corner, down past the fancy new raked seating and there we are: the Grand Hall.

“R20?” I ask the usher standing there.

“Yup, through here,” she says pointing to the nearest aisle. “And right to the back.”

She’s right. I am right at the back. The row behind is empty, being used by the tech desk. This is as far away as you can get at Blackheath Halls.

“It’s going to get really hot up here,” says someone in my row.

“Didn’t there used to be fans?” comes the reply.

“They were taken out in the restoration. They were supposed to be replaced by what they call, not air conditioning, but an air cooling system.”

“It doesn’t seem to be working!”

It really doesn’t. I get out my fan and try to move some of this thick air around, but it isn’t doing much good.

“I can feel a bit of air coming from somewhere!” says the first person.

Yeah. That’s me, love. You’re welcome.

One of the musicians in the orchestra waves at someone in the audience. Hugs and kisses and greetings are exchanged as the seats fill up. It’s going to be one of those nights. Where everyone knows everyone, and the rest are related to people in the cast. No wonder the run is sold out.

Lights dim. We begin.

It’s… ummm… what is this?

We seem to be doing the story of Helen of Troy. But it’s a comedy. And a rather tedious comedy at that.

All around me the audience is laughing. The kind of performative laughter you get at Shakespeare plays. The “I get this, I’m clever,” type of laughter. Well, I don’t get this. I’m not clever.

Ruth was right. There is a massive community cast. Every time I think the stage is full, more people keep on coming out. There’s a whole classroom’s worth of uniformed kids up on stage now.

And the heat is astonishing. At first it was merely unbearable. It is now a hell inferno. I can feel the weight of it pressing down on my chest. I rub my collarbones, hoping to free them up. My skin is clammy and hot to the touch.

First act one hour thirty. Second act thirty minutes. I can do this. It’s fine. Just listen to the music.

But the music is terrible. The storyline ridiculous. The characters irritating.

I find myself rolling my eyes every time someone makes a joke. And there are a lot of them.

I can’t believe it’s only a few weeks since I saw that glorious, well-thought out programme at Queen’s House. And now I’m here. Watching this right pile of tut.

My eyes are beginning to hurt I’m rolling them so hard. I think I might have dislocated a retina.

There’s a light up board on the stage.

“1 ‘ere, 2 ‘eme, 3 ‘eme, Int,” it says. 1’ere has been lit up for a long time. I keep an eye on it. I was sure if was keeping track of what act we were in, but now I’m not convinced. It’s been stuck at 1 ’ere for ever. It must be broken.

Just as I’m debating whether the heaviness in my breathing is a precursor to me fainting or just throwing up, it switches to “Int.” I watch it hungrily, not even paying attention to what’s happening on stage anymore.

I have to get out of here.

A few minutes later, it switches again. “2 ‘eme.” Act two.

Oh my god. Only act two? Out of three?

No. Nope. Definitely not. I can’t do it. I can’t.

I will die. And throw up. And faint. In that order.

I look up, fixung my eyes on the intricate mouldings in the ceiling, willing myself to get through to the end.

Not long now. I can cool off in the interval. And then just thirty more minutes.

Thirty. More. Minutes.

I can’t do it.

Yes, I can.

I never leave in the interval. I hate leaving in the interval.

I’ve only done it once on this marathon. At an amateur performance when the room was swelteringly hot…

Oh.

Oh…

No. I’m staying.

Am I?

I mean, I don’t have to. I’m not on a press ticket. I paid to be here. With my own money. I’m under no obligation to stay.

I’ve given up on the performance entirely now. I don’t care what’s happening on stage. I’m thinking. A half hour interval. That’s time enough to go outside and sit in the shade for a bit, I tell myself. But half an hour though… in that time I could make it back to London Bridge. And be home by 10pm. And have an electric fan pointed directly at my face.

And who even programmes half-hour intervals? Followed by another half-hour act? That’s dragging on the evening a whole extra thirty minutes that we could be putting towards an early night.

Screw that.

I’ll see how I feel when the interval hits, I promise myself. If I want to go. I can go.

I try to focus back on the performance, but they are having some bizarre VR dream sequence now and if this goes on any longer I’m going to scream.

And then finally, finally. We make it. The stage lights darken. The house lights go up. We’re free. I burst out of my seat, grabbing my jacket and my coat and then… I’m stuck. The aisle is packed. There’s no way to get out.

I flick open my fan and try to cool myself, but it’s no good. I am going to faint.

“There’s a breeze coming from somewhere,” says a lady ahead of me.

“Yeah, it’s the woman with the fan,” says the man she’s with.

You’re welcome. Again.

But seriously, if you lot don’t shift yourselves, the pair of you are going to get yourself a vomit shower.

We creep out way down the rake, step by aching step.

“If the whole place went up in flames, it would take a long time to get out,” someone says wryly.

He means it as a joke, but I would willingly step into the heart of the fire right now if it got me out of this oven. Anything to end this agony.

Some front of housers open the side doors, and people start to pour out that way. The queue quickens.

I race down the corridor, back around the corner, squeezing myself through the bar, and the foyer, and I’m out.

Ruth spots me. Or more accurately, she spots my face.

“It is hot in there,” she says, as she’s confronted by the strawberry coloured woman in front of her.

“I’m making an escape,” I say. “I am going to faint.”

Ruth nods. “Fair enough. You head home.”

I don’t need telling twice. I’m gone. Back down the hill. Back to the station. My fan flapping the whole way.

No one told me there would be running on this marathon

I swear I’m going to have a heart attack by the end of this year.

Last night was the turn of the Brockley Jack Theatre (or possibly the Jack Studio Theatre, I’m not quite sure. Their website isn’t very clear on the matter of what they are called), which meant I was back off to south London and had to endure all the transport issues that go along with venturing south of the river.

I thought I’d give the ThamesLink a go. Be adventurous. Avoid the trains.

That was a mistake.

I arrived at Blackfriars just in time for the 6.26 to Orpington. Excellent work. Except the train wasn’t.

Ten minutes later I was still waiting. Then twelve. Then fifteen.

I was beginning to panic.

No, scrap that. I had left panic behind back in the office. This was way beyond that.

Now, being a feminist and all, I have a problem using the word hysterical. But… stripping away the history of the term, as words go, it wasn’t far off what I was feeling. Inside. I think I managed to keep it contained for the most part. I mean, yes, a few people on the platform gave me looks as I bounced around on my heels, staring at the departures board with an unblinking stare and muttering under my breath. But they probably just thought I’d been mixing meds.

Finally, just as I was giving up all hope, and with absolutely no consideration of my nerves, the train arrived.

After that, it was easy. Well, almost. I’m fairly certain the American lady from Monday’s theatre excursion might have fainted if she had a sniff around Crofton Park station. Best just to hold one’s nose and make a run for it, I find.

I’m quickly becoming a connoisseur of the ‘how to find us’ pages on theatre websites.

And the Brockley Jack is a very fine vintage… can you tell I don’t know wine?

Regardless, so good where the instructions that the delivered me straight to the door of the theatre. Which turned out to be exactly what I didn't need. The pavement there was far to narrow to get a photo of the building. Where were the warnings about that, Jack Studio… or whatever your name is?

My first attempt to zip over to road was quickly aborted when I realised that I would definitely die. Instead I sprinted, yes - actually ran - down to the nearest crossing, jumped around waiting for the light to change, dashed to the other side, took my photos (all full of cars damn it) then scampered back for the return journey before making it in the door... fifteen minutes early. I'll say this for anxiety... I'm rarely late.

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"Surname is Smiles" I said to the person manning the box office desk. I was a little out of breath. "S-M-I-L-E-S," I spelt out. I always need to spell out my name. Otherwise people tend to think they’ve misheard.

"I was just looking at your booking."

"Oh dear". Now, it's not uncommon for me to get that kind of comment when I'm picking up tickets. What with the aforementioned surname. I end up having some form of name-based conversation at least twice a week. Four times a week now that I'm hitting up so many box offices while in marathon-mode. But this man was not interested in my surname.

"It says here that you paid zero pounds for your ticket"

"Oh... ummm" I was fairly certain I had paid slightly more than zero pounds for my ticket. But perhaps I had somehow managed to circumnavigate the whole paying step without noticing. I thought back, trying to remember the transaction. I couldn't. There's been rather a lot of them recently. They all seem to merge together.

I looked where he was pointing. There, listed next to my name on the box office print out, was the figure £0.00.

“But I double checked the machine and you paid ten pounds.”

“That’s good…”

“Sometimes it just happens.”

“I can check on my end if that helps…” I said, reaching for my phone, not knowing quite sure how I would do that but wanting to show willing.

“No, it’s fine. You have definitely paid.”

“Oh… good.”

“Can I interest you in a programme?”

He definitely could. Only a pound. Bloody bargain.

Programme and ticket-token acquired, I was directed to the adjoining pub.

You could tell who all the theatre-goers were there. We all sat on one end, huddled together like awkward penguins, silent, surrounded by a mess of coats and programmes.

At 7.25, the theatre bell rang, and we stirred. Slowly at first. The bell’s clang taking its time to work its way into our trance states. One person managed to stumble to their feet, lumbering their way towards the theatre. Another followed. Until we all managed to stagger our way down the hall, like a plague of zombies, except slightly more worn-looking.

The theatre itself is teeny tiny. Although seating is technically on three sides, two of the sides only manage about fifteen seats between them. End-on, there is a single row at stage level, and then a further three tucked away on a platform behind them. Plonking myself in the second row, I managed to enjoy the twin pleasures of having a view unobstructed by any heads in front of me, and none of the vulnerability associated with sitting out front. It doesn’t get much better than that.

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I was there to see Gentlemen Jack, which I chose for two reasons. Firstly, I liked the idea of double-Jack action, what with the play name and the theatre. What can I say? I’m a simple person. The other was that being about Anne Lister, the 19th century diarist, mine-owner, and very-out lesbian, the play had a higher chance than usual of containing bonnets.

After the disappointing lack of frothy-headgear in my last theatrical trip to the 1800s, I was doing my best not to get too excited about the prospect. I do get why directors might not want to insert bonnets into their plays. They obstruct the face and all that. But god-dammit, I love them. And they are period appropriate. And and and… I just want bonnets. Is that too much to ask?

No, as it happens. Because this play delivered.

Yes, my friends. There were bonnets. Multiple ones. 

I was so bloody happy.

What a fucking excellent play. I really enjoyed it.

Not just because of the bonnets you understand.

I mean, it was mainly the bonnets. But there were other things too.

The entirety of Lister’s wardrobe, for one. All black. All fabulous.

That floor-length black velvet coat? Yeah, I wanted to take that home with me.

It made me feel quite gauche sitting there in my dress covered in a loud and obnoxious print of red roses. Yes, it was from Killstar. And yes, the roses had some spiky grey thorns. But my Goth-points were running at an all time low in the face of such Regency-gothic goodness.

And then the lacey dressing gown worn by one of her lovers… damn. I should wear more lace. My life is definitely lacking in the lace department.

I wonder if I can get one on eBay…