A very Brexit Musical

I got chatting with one of the students at my work yesterday. Told her I was seeing Hamilton.

"Be nice to the ushers," she says, lowing her voice and her head as she fixes her eyes on me.

"Tough gig?" I ask.

She sighs and nods. “They have it really hard."

"Is it the audience?"

She hesitates. "Well, it's the security. It's considered a high risk venue. With Buckingham Palace on one side and Victoria station on the other."

"Ah," I say. I've seen the sniffer dogs prowling the aisles pre-show when I've been before (twice... not that I'm showing off about having seen Hamilton twice already, but I'm totally showing off about having seen Hamilton twice already). "They don't get danger pay I take it..."

She laughs. "No. They do not."

Well then.

I decide to walk to the Victoria Palace. I'm not taking any chances on the tube. Not tonight.

As I wait for the traffic lights to change, I pull out my phone and double check the pre-show email. Last time I was here it was chock full of instructions to arrive early, bring photo ID, your mother's birth certificate, and a full family tree stretching back to the Norman Conquest. But things have changed since then. Or least, I hope they have. Because I haven't brought any of that shit with me.

The queue to get in stretches all the way along the front of the theatre, down the road, and to the corner.

"If you're collecting, keep to the left," orders a dog handler. His charge monitors the queue with watchful eyes and ever ready nose.

An old woman pauses on the pavement to stare at the line incredulously. "These people are all queuing to get in the theatre!" she says, sounding absolutely flabbergasted at the idea. "My word!"

I find my way to the end. Within seconds more people fall in behind me.

"Certainly the longest theatre queue I've been in," sniffs the person standing behind me.

We shuffle forward.

"Tickets on the right!" calls out a queue controller. "If you're collecting, follow round to the left."

I stare down at my hands. Which way is left again?

I panic. I can't remember.

"Sorry," I say to the queue controller as I pass him. "Which way if I'm collecting?"

"To the left, madam," he says, helping pointing out which way left actually is.

I head for the left. "Are you collecting, madam?" asks the controller of the junction.

"Yes!" I say, happy that I'm going the right way.

"Perfect!" she says, beaming right back.

We're moving fast now that we've got rid of those people who had their tickets posted to them in advance.

The two men in front of me turn around.

"Do you want to go ahead?" they ask in very American accents.

"Are you sure?" I say, going into full-scale Queen-mode with my British one. 

"Yeah, we're waiting for someone," they say, and step back to let me pass.

I'm near the front now.

"If you could get your bag ready," says the bag checker. He doesn't sound impressed.

I open my bag.

"How are you?" he asks.

"I'm great!" I say.

"That's the way!" he says, waving me through.

The woman on the door puts out her hand to still me. "If you could stop there, my love," she says, turning to look back into the foyer.

We wait until one of the box officers is free and she lowers her hand. "Right over there, if you don't mind."

I don't mind at all. In I go.

The box officers are running back and forth behind their counter, fetching tickets. My one smiles at me from the end of the line.

"Hi! The surname's Smiles!"

With a nod, he disappears to the back, returning seconds later with my ticket.

"Maxine?"

"Yup!"

"You're in the Grand Circle. Right at the top."

After spending eleven months trying to get a ticket on the Hamilton lottery app, I admitted defeat and bought the cheapest ticket I could find. Thirty-seven quid to sit in the Grand Circle. Right at the top.

It's a quality show. But still.

I turn around and almost bounce against the mass of people heading towards the Stalls. Oof. Okay. I hang back, waiting for a gap, but I soon realise that I'm going to have to make my own.

Elbows out, I step forward, and don't stop until I reach the bottom step of the stair that will take me up to the Grand Circle. I keep on going, not even pausing as I take a photo. I find myself in a bar. There's a pretty light installation falling through the oculus that runs though the ceiling and then the floor.

It's very pretty, but there's not time to hang around. I've just spotted a programme seller lurking over by the door.

"These ones are four fifty," he says, pointing to the smaller of the two options he is clutching in his hands.

I pull out my purse. Not Fred. Fred is dead. This one is black. A gift from my sister-in-law from years and years ago. It's a grown-up purse. Patent leather, and not in the shape of an elephant. I'm not sure how I feel about it.

"Err, do you have change for a tenner?" I ask, as I peer inside the black interior.

"I do! Here's five and fifty pee."

As he hands me the change, someone else comes up and asks to get a programme.

"That's four fifty," says the programme seller, turning away from me.

"Sorry," I say, as the newcomer hands over a five pound note. "Can I get my programme?"

The programme seller jumps. "Oh!" he exclaims. "Sorry!"

He pulls one from his pile and hands it over.

I squeeze myself past him and start the long climb up to the Grand Circle. There are a lot of stairs. Every time I turn a corner I think I'm done, but nope: there's even more.

As I emerge into the auditorium, my head spins at the sight of the stage far below us. It's really high up here.

"It slopes," warns a woman we go in.

No kidding. The steps are very steep. And very tiny. Small enough that even with my size twos, I can't fit my entire foot on one, giving a constant feeling of unbalance. Not the emotion you really want to be having when you are hundreds of feet above the stalls.

I clutch at the balustrades as I make my way down to my row.

A woman stops right ahead of me, and I almost barrel into her. But I manage to regain my footing just before I send her flying into the orchestra pit.

I wait, but she doesn't seem to have any intention of moving.

We stand there, blocking the aisle. Me struggling to stay upright on these tiny steps. Her... doing whatever she's doing.

Just as I consider fainting as a viable way of getting myself out of this situation, she moves on, and I am able to sink into my seat, helpfully placed right on the aisle.

My shins bang against the chair in front.

I don't remember the leg room being this bad down in the Stalls.

Yup, I saw Hamilton from the stalls. Twice. Did I mention that I have already seen Hamilton twice? Well, it's true. I've seen it twice.

As bruises start to form on my legs, I try to distract myself by the cries of anguish from the people still tackling the stairs.

"Oh gawd, these steps!"

"Oh gawd, these are so high!"

"Oh gawd, I hate being so high up!"

The man sitting in front of me arrives, blocking my view of the stage and immediately sets about ramming himself back into his seat, right against my legs.

This is going to be a long night. What's the running time on this musical again?

I look it up. 

Two hours and forty-five minutes.

Holy fuck.

Eventually the stairs clear and the lights dim.

A disembodied voice introduces himself as our king and tells us to turn off our phones before enjoying his show.

A small whoop goes up from the back of the circle, and those familiar beats start. We're off.

And I mean... I fucking love Hamilton.

I know it's cool not to be into it anymore. All the sneering hipsters have moved on to rhapsodising about panto, because that's how the world works nowadays.

Well, fuck them. I think it's great. And if they want to spend their days shouting "it's behind you!" then they are welcome to it.

It does occur to me though, about halfway through the King's first song, that Hamilton is a bit... well, Brexity. I mean, all that stuff about wanting to be independent from a distant ruler across the sea who controls the price of tea...

The thought it making me very uncomfortable.

As the battle-smoke clears and the victory song of Yorktown starts I hold my breath for that famous line.

"Immigrants: we get the job done."

Silence. 

Then a wry titter flows through the audience.

Lafayette and Hamilton barely even pause. They're used to this lack of reaction to the line. A line that stopped the show for a full minute when I was here in 2017, as the audience exploded into applause.

Oh dear.

I wince as the man in front of me rams himself back again, like a toddler throwing a tantrum in a car seat.

The King is back.

"All alone, across the sea," he sings and I cringe. He couldn't be more on the nose if he tried. That Lin-Manuel is a bloody fortune teller. "When your people say they hate you. Don't come crawling back to me."

Christ. We'll on be crawling on our knees to Brussels like medieval pilgrims soon enough.

I clamp my lips shut, struggling to keep down the need to scream out: “VOTE LABOUR!” in this packed theatre. 

We're at Non-Stop now. Thank the theatre gods. It got here just in time. The pre-interval banger in a musical stuffed with bangers.

This is the song I always put on when I need to crash out a two-thousand word blog post in my lunchbreak. 

"How do you write ev’ry second you’re alive?" is a question I ask myself every damn day as I approach the half-million mark on my blog's word count for the year. These fingers are typing like they're running out of time... just twenty-two days left to go.

As soon as the house lights are up, I grab my bag and make a bolt for the bar, unable to spend another second in that seat.

"It is clever, isn't it?" says someone as I pass them. "Who wrote it?"

Mind-boggling I listed as their friend tries to explain who Lin-Manuel Miranda is.

"Is it based on a true story?" 

"... I think so? He was a founding father. I think. Yeah, like, in seventeen...something."

I mean... she's not wrong?

"Five minutes until the start of act two!" shouts the bar man.

"Act two?" asks someone.

The person he's with shakes his head. He doesn't know that term either.

We go back in.

I lean against my chair until the rest of my row arrives. I don't want to be sitting down in that seat a second longer than I need to. As the last person squeezes past me I wriggle my toes and then give my knees a good rub in preparation.

A disembodied voice who is very much not the King warns us that there is three minutes to go and we should probably be turning off our phone now.

The man sitting in front of me bounces against the back of his chair, adding in a few elbow thrusts into his repertoire.

As the lights go down, his elbow connects with my knee.

He half turns his head, but soon realises it's only a woman he hit, and goes back to his bouncing and thrusting and moving his head around.

I follow his movements, tilting my head right and left in the opposite direction to him. But every turn sends shoots of pain down my back as the pressure on my legs makes itself known in the rest of my body.

I'm going to need a gift membership with my local chiropractor for Christmas at this rate.

Hamilton runs about, building his new, independent country.

It may be my imagination, but I can feel the yearning in the audience. These huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

They want the American dream. But in Britain. And with wifi.

The King is back. I'm beginning to feel quite kindly towards him and his tyranny.

As he dismisses us with a sneering "Good Luck" I can't help but think it's going to take a good deal more than luck.

We're nearing the end. The bit that always makes me cry. But it's alright. Three trips is enough for me to be over that. My eyes are dry. I'm safe.

But as Burr tells us that both Eliza and Angelica were at Hamilton's side as he dies, that's it. I'm gone.

Tears are falling. Eyeliner is lost.

And I sob my way through to the end.

We're all fucking done for, aren't we?

I pull my coat tight around me as I race down the stairs and out into the cold December air and dive into the tube station.

The train pulls into Green Park.

Doors open.

Doors close.

We don't move.

A breathless voice comes over the tannoy.

There's a fight in car number five.

Men run down the platform to break it up.

Doors open.

Doors close.

We move on.

And I make my way back to that Tory-rat hole, Finchley. 

I'm all ready to cast my useless vote. Useless because those meglamanical, power-hungry, statistic-twisting Lib Dems have been trying to pretend they have a chance and are determined to split the Labour vote in a marginal seat where they barely scrapped through as the third party in 2017.

Not a day has gone past in the past two weeks were I haven't got their nonsense flyers coming through my letterbox, wanking on about bullshit antisemitism. Yeah, well fuck all that. I may be Jewish but I'm not blinkered. 

Because when all is said and all is done… Corbyn has beliefs; Boris has none.

VOTE LABOUR!

A Tale Told in Three Programmes

Leicester Square at Christmas is quite the sight. The usual pools of vomit have been replaced by the more glittery sight of Christmas upchuck. Everything is lights and colour and consumerism.

At least the beatboxers are still here. 

Rocking their tunes in the middle of a crowd. A sign displaying their Instagram handle in place of a upturned hat.

"By the way," says the beatboxer, pausing in the middle of his spree. "It's called freestyle. I hope you like it."

The crowd is not unappreciative, but I can't hang around. I have tickets to pick up.

The box office for the Spiegletent is right next to the entrance.

It's in a small wooden cabin that I'm sure it meant to make us think of gingerbread and ski chalets. It's painted red, and the windows are split into four panes, like a child's drawing of a house.

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

He types something into his computer and a second later my ticket is printing off.

"There you go," he says, handing it over. And that's it. I'm dismissed.

Easy.

I head for the entrance. A huge sign is proclaiming Christmas at Leicester Square as the home of La Clique. The trees are drenched in lights, and the pathways crowded with more cabins - these ones more of the market stall variety.

First up though, the bag checkers. I pull mine forward, ready to open, but neither of the hi-vis jacketed men on duty pay the slightest bit of interest in me, and I walk past without interruption.

I'm a little bit early, so I find myself hanging out with a row of Christmas trees while I come up with a plan. I could stand here an edit a blog post. That would be the sensible thing to do. But the whole point of my blog is to write about the experience of going to the theatre, so perhaps I should be off experiencing it. Not at all to indulge in Christmas shopping, you understand. This is a purely selfless enterprise. I need to look at what all these cabins are selling for you.

Turns out though, they're all selling a bunch of tat.

Wooden tat. Crystal tat. Tote bag tat.

I keep on going, hoping there's something to help me knock at least one name off my Christmas list, but as I turn the corner and start up the opposite path, I seem to be getting a repeat view: more wood, more crystal, and some Union Jack hats.

The air smells of molten sugar and hot dogs. The food-stalls alternative between carbs and sausages. My two favourite food groups, but the combined fug is turning my stomach. 

People wander around clutching at paper cups and a curious lack of shopping bags.

I finish my rotation and end up at the entrance to the tent.

A pretty girl and her date are arguing about whether to go in.

"What time does it start? It's only half past..." says the most chill dude ever.

His gorgeous girl isn't having it though. She wants to go inside, and he follows on up the steps behind her.

I suppose I should go to.

Up the steps and towards the entrance which is rocking some old school circus vibes.

I hand my ticket over to one of the ticket checkers and she tears off the tab.

"Err, sorry, which way is it?" I ask, looking between the two entrances to the space. One either side of us.

"Either way!" she replies happily.

I chose left, because I like being sinister.

Inside I find myself in the emptiest bar I've ever seen in my life. A vast space punctuated only by a small group leaning over on the bar.

I have no interest in joining them, so I go through.

More ticket checkers await, both wearing the bowler hats so beloved of cabaret performers. Although I'm not quite sure they are usually worn with plaid shirts. But it's a bold satorial choice, and I respect it.

"You're rear stalls," says plaid shirt, glancing at my ticket. "Which is these ones here." He points over to two short rows of high stools, tucked against the wall.

But I'm too busy gawping at the space to inspect them properly. It's quite something in here. Like a proper circus high-top, the circular ceiling is lined with stripey fabric. Huge globes of light float around the frame. And roving spotlights pick up the ruched satin curtains behind the stage. It all has the exact level of seedy glamour that you would hope for when booking a revue show.

In the centre, tucked up close to the stage, are circles of chairs. Then there's a moat-like walkway. After which come the booths. The booths look rather nice. All tucked away and darkly lit. The sort of place you could get very very drunk and not even care. 

Pity that they are all completely empty.

I turn around and head towards the stools at the back, and pick one in the second row. 

There's a programme waiting for me on the seat. They all seem to have one.

I pick it up and have a quick flick through. But I'm left rubbing my palms in disgust. The paper is all wavy. Like someone dropped it in the bath and thought they could get away with drying it on the radiator. 

Looking around to check no one is watching, I switch it with the one on the next seat.

This one isn't wavy. But the cover feels all crusty.

I really don't want to contemplate what with. A cocktail, I tell myself. 

"Is anyone sitting there?" asks the leader in a gang of three young men. He points to the three empty stools next to me.

"Go for it," I say, twisting around in my seat so that he can get past.

But a second later, one of the bowler hatted ticket checkers come over, and they are backing out, disappearing around the walkway.

A few more people go after them.

Something tells me that I missed something quite significant.

The bowler hatted lady returns. "Did you hear what I said?" she asks, looking at me curiously.

I have to admit that I did not.

"We're not sold out tonight, so we're offering a free upgrade."

"Oh!" I say. "Wow. Great."

I slip off my seat, grab my coat, and follow her into the main pit, close to the stage.

"Just one?" she asks.

Yup. Just one.

She leans into a row. "Is this free?" she asks. The row residents all nod. Yes, it's free. "In here," she says, waving me in. 

I appear to have found myself in the third row. That's quite the upgrade.

The girl on the end stands up to let me through. The boy on the other side grabs the programme from the seat and holds it until I sit down. "There you are, this is yours," he says one I've plonked myself down.

This one feels very smooth. It definitely hasn't had a drink spilled on it.

"Sorry, your coat," says the girl as she takes her seat again.

"Sorry," I say, stuffing it out of the way. "It gets everywhere." It's a big coat.

"No, it's your coat. If you don't mind it being on the floor..."

"Eh," I say with a shrug. "It's cheap."

That done, we settle back.

Our host for the evening is Bernie Dieter, dressed in a slinky cat suit with feathers emerging from her shoulders and a black wig sitting on her head, making her look like a bird of prey. The object of her hunt soon becomes obvious.

"Silver Fox," she purrs, narrowing her eyes at one of the men sitting in the front row.

She turns back to us. It's a Monday night, but that's no excuse for a poor show from the audience. She's going to make sure we know what we're doing. 

She starts us off gently. Clapping with just single fingers. Then two. "Then the whole hand," she says with the dirtiest leer I've ever seen.

The bar is at the back, she tells us. The toilets are at the back and on the right. She's in full flight attendant mode now, gesturing with her arms. No flash photography, it's dangerous for the performers. And, she adds with a lowering of the head to show she means business, if she sees our little phones out, she will confiscate them, and stick them down Silver Fox's pants. And she will not be held responsible for any dick pics that might appear on them.

With that dire warning ringing in our ears, we begin.

The acts move quickly. A singer, a juggler, acrobats. None of them stay long enough for us to get bored. All of them beautiful and sultry and not wearing very much.

And then Dieter is back. She hasn't forgotten about Silver Fox, but she's out for fresh blood now.

Her dancing finger lands on a young man in my row. My neighbour's neighbour. And presumably his date for tonight.

"Business!" she names him with a triumphant jab of her finger.

She kicks off her shoes and she's off.

I lean down to move my bag out of her way. But nothing could stop her, she launches herself through the row, clambering up over Business and straddling him. He blinks at her, shocked, but he's taking it well. At the demand to caress her, he strokes her thigh. When she insists that he add another hand to the mix, he clamps onto her bottom, digging his fingers in.

I squirm uncomfortably.

With all the horror stories of audience members getting all groppy in immersive theatre, seeing something so blatant is sending me into paroxysms of worry. But then, I did just go to a play where one of the actors asked if I wanted to slap him, so perhaps I'm being to precious about it. As long as the performers are comfortable with what's happening, I should be too...

"It's Monday," Dieter purrs. "You've worked hard." 

She eyes the woman sitting next to him. "Is this your Mother?" she asks, shocked. "Oh my god, it is! You're doing this in front of your Mother!"

It's time to get someone else involved.

"Lumberjack!" she coos at a man wearing a plaid shirt sitting just behind us. And she beckons him in to the embrace. One hand on her. One on Business. They writhe together.

It's not enough for Dieter.

"Beardie!" she calls.

"Shaven Haven!"

Now in charge of a veritable harem, she has a job for them. To carry her back to the stage.

Business it seems, is not just a smart chap in a suit. Oh no. This guy works out, and he's not afraid to show off. Clapping his hands on Dieter's thighs, he hefts her onto his shoulder and carries her out, with the rest of us scrambling to get out of their way.

Giggling, we all return to our places.

But if anyone thought about relaxing, the ushers coming in with huge plastic sheets soon put a stop to that. They drape them over the front row. Designating them a splash zone, and as Jamie Swan takes a bath on stage he makes sure they get wet. 

The ladies in the front row lift up their portion of sheet, cowering behind it, in fear of their blow-drys.

Slightly damp, we are released for the interval, with the order to go to the bar. I suspect this is more of a warning. If this is act one, alcohol may truly be required for the second part.

Stage hands appear with squeegee mops and start pushing the water off the stage, will one of the ticket checkers in the bowler hats works on mopping up the floor. Mops are replaced by towels, and they crawl around on their hands and knees, working the the stage until it is perfectly dry and it's time to start the show again.

"It's a quality night," says my neighbour as he returns to his seat.

"Yeah, it's funny," agrees Business.

Business' mum nods along. She's loving it.

The band is back on stage. We're ready for act two.

Except nothing could have prepared us for the beautiful David Pereira. Too shocked laughter at his shaving cream antics, he bounces off the stage and asks for help from a man sitting in the front row.

Our front rower is a little wary, but he does his best to help out. Only to find himself with a lap covered in foam.

Dieter comes out with a sympathetic smile, clutching a packet of baby wipes. The shell-shocked front rower takes one, but she presses the entire pack on him. He's going to need it. 

He wipes delicately at his trouser legs. He doesn't seem to have noticed that his jacket is coated too, from where Pereira wound his creamed-up arm around the man's neck.

His programme has slipped out of his hands and onto the floor. It's covered with foam.

I think we're solved the mystery of the crusty programmes.

"You need a drink," Dieter says soothly, and a stage manager runs over, drink in hand.

But there's no time to linger on him. It's time for the next act. Under cover of darkness, Dieter comes back with a towel so that our foamy front rower can get the stuff out of his hair. He seems much more relaxed now that he has a drink in his hands.

"I'm so glad we're not sitting over there," whispers Business to my neighbour, as if he hadn't just been wiggling his bum at at audience that contains his own mother.

When Leah Shelton starts pulling a tiny red handkerchief from increasingly more intimate locations, to the shocked laughter of the audience, I make a mental note not to ever take my mother to see La Clique.

Handkerchief recovered for the final time (and sniffed) we are sent out into the night with a drinking song.

Out in the bar, a pap board has been set up and people are queueing up to have their photo taken with the (now fully clothed) Dieter and Shelton. I keep on walking, stepping out into a fog of sausage fumes.

Wake Me Up When December Ends

I am having such a good day. I just found out that Helen (you know Helen) has passed her master's with a distinction, Ellen (you know her too) has done a mega work-thing, and me... well, just the little matter of me getting name-checked in the December round-up on Exeunt. 

As day's go, this one is proving to be pretty spectacular. I am ridiculously happy. Stupidly happy. Deliciously happy. Okay, maybe not deliciously. That one's weird. But the others: definitely. I can't stop smiling.

"I like your coat darling!" says a rando bloke on the road.

"Thanks!" I say cheerfully. It is an amazing coat. 

"Can I get your number?" he says. "Hey! Hey! Hey!"

But my coat and I are already bouncing away. Nothing can touch me today, not even...

A man rolls down the window of his white van to wolf whistle in my direction. 

It's such a cliche I almost laugh in response.

Honestly, this whole smiling thing is dangerous.

Oh well, I make it the rest of the way to Bloomsbury without further incident. 

Signs decorate the railings with messages supporting the university pension strike. Can't say I completely understand the intricacies of it all. Or even the basics. But frankly, I'm too worried about my own lack of pension to care about anyone else's.

Oh well, I'm here now. The Bloomsbury Theatre. My second and last visit. I skip up the steps and head into the bright foyer. More steps and up to the box office.

I set my shoulders. In the reminder email from UCL Event Ticketing, they tried to convince me that I don't need a ticket. That I can just show my confirmation email on the door. Well, I'm not having it. I want a proper physical ticket, and nothing is going to stop me.

"Hello, the surname's Smiles," I say to the box officer behind the counter.

She taps something into her computer. 

I run through my pleading speech on my head as I wait.

There's a sheet of paper stuck up on the window.

There's a QR code on it. "SCAN FOR THE PROGRAMME!" it says.

Oh dear. They are really committed to this no paper thing. Not even a programme! If this is the modern age, I want none of it.

"Maxine?"

"...yes."

She nods, and a second later my ticket is printing and she's sliding it across the counter.

"Oh... thanks!"

Okay then. Umm. Not sure what to do with myself now.

I decamp to the nearest pillar and set about tearing off the receipt and stuffing it into my bag and eyeing up all the QR codes with suspicion.

There's a group of young people hanging around nearby, jumping up like meercats whenever someone comes through the door.

"Oh! You're seeing this!" they cry in unison.

None of them are scanning the QR codes.

In the corner there's a big set of double doors, guarded either side by ticket checkers. 

I watch as a young man with a suitcase rolls over.

The ticket checkers both look at it.

"Umm," says one. "You can leave it in the office?" He grasps the handle and helps the young man move it inside.

I join the queue.

"First door on the right!" says the ticket checker. "Enjoy the show!"

Through the door and I find myself in a secondary foyer. Doors on the right lead off to various parts of the theatre, while on the right is a small concession desk, with a not particularly generous display of snacks. Galaxy bars and Tyrell's crisps are laid out in rows. I suppose it's hard to make a merch desk look good without programmes to baulk them out.

At the back, there's a proper bar, surrounded by old posters. There isn't much of a queue. That's Gen Z for you. All heading to their seats to sit quietly and get ready for the show. They've probably pre-downloaded the programme and are busy memorising the song order in preparation. Bless them.

Music pours out of the auditorium, from a playlist that must surely be called Green Day's Greatest Hits, because, you guessed it, I'm here to see American Idiot. UCL Musical Theatre Society style.

I go through the first door, as directed. It takes me to the front of the stalls in what is a decently sized theatre. There's a circle overhanging the back, but that appears to be closed for tonight. The walls are covered in those slim wooden planks that are so beloved by higher education theatres. LAMDA has them. ArtsEd too.

The stage is raised, and big enough for the dance performances that happen here occasionally.

I go find my seat. The end of the third row. As is my preference. 

Not the best angle. I'm losing a bit of the stage, in the back corner, but I do get a clear view right into the wings, where I can see the cast jumping up and down as they warm up.

A girl pauses at the end of our row, trying to get in.

The bloke blocking her way reaches down to pick up his glass of beer and then proceeds to not move. Not himself. Not the huge puffer coat on the floor. Or the massive rucksack taking up the entire path.

Seeing that he has no intention of moving any further now that he's rescued his beer, she hops over his mountain and stumbles to her seat.

I think we've discovered who the British Idiot in the audience is tonight.

I glare at him on her behalf.

He doesn't notice. He leans forward to place his glass back down in front of the buffer seat that separates us. I contemplate kicking it over, but I don't want to ruin my boots.

The recorded music stops, and the band takes over, as the cast come out racing.

And can we just take a moment to appreciate those boys wearing mass levels of black eyeliner. I mean... that is some quality audience service going on there.

I am not ashamed to admit that boys wearing eyeliner is a teenage weakness of mine that I never grew out of.

Okay, I am slightly ashamed to admit it, but if me telling you this results in the world just being that tiny bit more kohled up, then my embarrassment will not be in vain.

But then I notice something. The boys may be in eyeliner, but the girls are all rocking the plaid shirt and skater skirt look.

I look down at my outfit.

Red plaid shirt and little skater skirt.

Oh shit.

I swear, before all the theatre gods, this was not intentional. Yes, I love theme dressing, but this time it is just a coincidence. I did not turn up to watch American Idiot, by myself, in costume. I just like tartan. And skirts. I would go so far as to say, those both feature in my top ten things to wear.

I slink down in my seat, hoping that no one else has noticed, and try not to worry about the fact that I'm dressed like a teenager from 2009. Was I even a teenager in 2009? Shit. No. I wasn't. I was already a fully-fledged adult. Christ. That's... let's not talk about that anymore.

I try to concentrate on the story.

There doesn't seem to be much of one.

Oh, sure. There's a plot. Rather a lot of it. But no characters. Just mannequins going through the motions without the hinderance of personality.

The songs are good though.

A girl in my row is having a great time, bouncing around her leg in time with the quality tunes.

And then it's the interval.

An usher comes in with a tray full of ice cream, setting up right in front of the speakers, now gone back to pumping out those hits.

If the usher is worried about damaging his hearing, he isn't letting it show. He's drumming his palms against the back of that box, bopping around, and looking like he is seriously enjoying himself, even if he doesn't manage to sell a single ice cream during the entire interval.

It's just not that crowd tonight.

As the lights go down for the second half, there's a massive whoop.

The students are out in force to support their friends. And by the looks of it, a few parents too. I spy a few grey-haired couples amongst the crowd, who don't strike me as massive Green Day fans, but then, I could be wrong. 2009 was a long time ago, after all. Even if I haven't managed to update my wardrobe in the past ten years, doesn't mean the fans weren't busy raising kids and sending them off to university.

They're certainly enthusiastic enough during the applause. It must be something quite mega to see your little darling being up there, on that massive stage, and being all talented and shit. Not something my parents were ever subjected to, a relief on all of our parts, but this lot seem happy about it.

I leap out of my seat and dive into my coat. I need to give some serious consideration to the continued presence of little skater skirts in my wardrobe.

One of the students at my work called me ma'am the other week. He's American, and was holding a door open for me at the time, so I think he thought he was being respectful. But... oof. I can't deny that it really hurt.

I'm going for twin sets and pearls from now on.

At least my coat is cool.

As I trot down the steps and make to push open the glass doors, I pause and look at my reflection.

I bought this coat thinking it would make me look like a Tolstoy heroine, but turns out I giving off more off a Pat Butcher vibe.

Huh.

Still, it's a good day. I guess...

Dial M for Mary

The queue to get into the Prince Edward theatre is stretching right down the pavement and around the corner.

They shudder close together, everyone looking up suspiciously as the sky begins to drizzle down on them.

With a big sigh, I walk to the end.

Except, is this the end? I can't tell. There seems to be a great old gap going on.

"Sorry," I say to the first person after the jump. "Are you not in the queue?"

"Yeah... we are..." she says, sounding just as dozy as you might imagine someone would who hasn't quite grasped the concept of moving with the line.

With a side-eye of confusion, she shuffles forward, closing the gap. And I fall in behind her group.

The queue moves slowly. Painfully so.

I don't mind. Even though I'm standing in the rain with no room to put up an umbrella. Because there is a sniffer dog on duty tonight and he is so super cute my heart is melting along with my makeup.

"Please have your bags open and ready for inspection!" shouts out the queue controller.

The young woman ahead of me opens her bag, ready for inspection.

"Have you got any food?" asks the bag checker.

"Yes," she says, looking confused.

She probably still believes that bag checks are to protect our 'comfort and security' and not the theatre's bar sales. So sweet. So innocent.

"Sorry," says the bag checker. You can't bring in food or drink."

The dozy woman steps forward. "Can she leave it somewhere?" 

The bag checker looks around. "Let me get a manager."

A manager is called. We all wait for his arrival.

"Sorry, you can't bring food in," says the manager, repeating the party line.

Honestly.

This wouldn't happen at the Shaw Theatre. They were putting people's food shops in the bar fridge for their audience members. You just can't get the service in the West End.

With the ladies now occupied with the manager, the bag checker moves on to me.

He reaches into my bag and grabs my water bottle, giving it a good squeeze. I'm not entirely sure what he was checking for there, but whatever the test was, my bottle passes.

"Got your tickets?" he asks.

"No, I'm collecting."

He points inside. "Just through there," he says and I am waved into a foyer that would very definitely feature as a puzzle room in some megalomaniac's house of death. Curved walls are punctuated by multiple exits that almost certainly lead to torture chambers, and we are crowded in, like sheep in a abattoir, all bleeting as we surge forward towards the bar or box office to be bled dry.

"Anyone collecting tickets, round that way," says the queue controller. Another one. It's all about controlling the queues at the Prince Edward.

I go round. 

And round.

And round.

Until I find the end of the queue.

Halfway up a flight of stairs.

I balance on a step and try not to fall over every time someone squeezes past to get to their seats.

"Very disorganised," a bloke mutters as he elbows me.

"You guys collecting tickets?" asks another before looking with despair at the end of the queue, far behind us.

But we move fast enough, the queue controller directing people to the next free box officer.

"What's your surname?" asks my box officer, just as I'm trying to tell him.

I repeat it. "Smiles. S. M. I. L E. S."

He looks through the ticket box, but the Ss are gone.

He turns around. "S?" he says to one of the other box officers.

"I've got the Ss!"

He turns back to me. "Can you spell your surname again?"

I can. And do. Slowly.

"Maxime?"

Eh. Close enough. 

"And what's the postcode?"

I tell him. He hands over the ticket.

It's well swish. It has the show artwork printed on it. I don't have time to admire it though, I already have someone trying very hard to walk through me.

I escape through the rope barriers and look around. I need the Grand Circle entrance. 

Ah! There it is.

Through one of the doorways that surely has a tank of piranhas waiting underneath a trapdoor on the other side.

"Looking forward to the show?" asks the ticket checker as she tears off the stub.

"Yeah!" I lie.

I'm not really looking forward to the show. I'm here to see Mary Poppins, and, I've got to admit, I really don't like Mary Poppins. Never did. Not even as a kid. So much do I not like it, that the last time it was in the West End, I refused to take my nephew to go see it. I just... could not face it.

And here we are.

Turns out I'm more committed to my marathon than my nephew.

Sorry Alexander!

Eh, he's alright. Started uni this year. I'm sure he's totally over it now.

But no usher needs to know all that. Best to be enthusiastic. Or at least, pretend to be.

"You're in door M!" she says, handing my shorn ticket back. "M for Mary!"

Lucky me.

I manage to evade the piranha tank, and start climbing the stairs. I have to admit, it's rather nice in this stairwell. As theatre stairwells go. The carpet is red. So are the walls. The stain of victims past, I suppose. But with lots of art deco gold details to lift the mood.

"Door M is through the bar!" says an usher, posted in what could be a very confusing crossroads, as signs pointing in every direction attempt to direct us to the correct doors.

Sure enough, I find myself in a bar. There's a glass cabinet filled with show merch. Rather upmarket show merch. The mugs are tall, the blankets fleecy, and the umbrellas have parrot heads on the handle.

Just like Mary's.

I'm almost tempted by one of them.

And the Bert Bear. Complete with chimney-sweeping broom. He's a cutie.

I have to remind myself that I don't actually like this musical.

I back away, keeping my debit card firmly in my bag as I head for door M.

The auditorium is red. Very red. I've seen a few red theatres on my travels, but mostly of the dingy sort. Ones where the walls are bumpy from years of polyfilla repairs. This is an entirely different sort of red. A glossy red. An expensive red.

I'm staring at it so much, I almost bump into the usher.

"Can I get a programme?" I ask automatically, unsure if she's even selling programmes.

Thankfully, she is.

"Of course you can!" she says. "Programmes are four fifty."

I stand aside to let her deal with the next person as I find the cash.

She pulls a programme from her satchel, and hands me the fifty pee of change.

"Err, D10?" I ask.

She leans in to peer at my ticket.

"You're down the stairs on the fourth row," she says, gesturing with her hands. "On the right."

Down the indicated stairs I go, to the fourth row, and find my seat, as promised, on the right. On the aisle as it happens. Well done me.

Coat safely stowed under seat, I twist around to get a good look at this place. It's a lot bigger than I'd imagined. I'd always thought of the Prince Edward as one of those diddy West End venues. Like the Phoenix. But it's bloody massive. The circle is broken up by a warren of split levels and aisles and brass railings. It's a good thing I asked for directions. I was have definitely got myself trapped somewhere if I hadn't, and my wails of anguish would have echoed around this beast of a space until a kindly usher took pity of me and put me out of my misery.

The seats fill up around me.

There are a lot of kids, but not as many as you might think. This isn't a Matilda audience. Lots of young women appear to have dragged along their equally young beaus, and are providing us all with a sneak preview as they do their best to sing the hits from the movie.

A couple of Americans are sitting behind me. They haven't joined in the sing-a-long. They're too busy munching their way through a Milky Way.

"It doesn't have carmel?" one of them exclaims.

“No. They don't over here."

That revelation stuns him into silence for a solid minute before they move onto their weekend plans.

The lights dim.

Whoops go out all over the theatre.

Childlike voices comes over the soundsystem. It's Jane, and Michael, Banks. They have something very important to tell us. And that is that Mary is here, and she has rules. We're to switch off our phones, and unwrap our sweets. Spit spot.

Mary sounds like a right bitch if you ask me.

The curtain rises and I grit my teeth as the children dash about being charmingly nauseating.

And then Mary appears, and is brusk and efficient and magical, I guess.

I mean... even my cold dead heart has to admire the stagecraft. Every minute is packed with a prop whizzing about or appearing suddenly, or disappearing, or turning into something else.

The tech team must be having constant kittens trying to get it to all work on cue.

I'm not the only one who's impressed.

A woman sitting down the front of the circle and she's got her phone out.

She's being pretty sneaky about it, she's turned the screen light right down, and she's holding it low, down close to her lap. She takes a photo. First portrait. Then landscape. Then at an artistically tilted angle.

I think she's done, but nope. She taps around on her screen, brings up Whatsapp, attaches the image to a chat, and then starts typing up a message.

I can't see what she wrote from all the way back here, but I'm willing to put money on it being a rave review of how much she's enjoying herself.

That done, the puts down the phone. But only for a moment, because down on stage the set has just changed and our lady needs to get herself another set of photos to remember it all by. Portrait. Landscape. Titled. Whatsapp. Done.

Interval.

Thank gawd. I don't think I could have handled a second more of those chirpy chimney sweeps.

"Chim chimney chim chimney..." sings a woman as she trots up the stairs to go to the bar.

"Chim chimney, chim chimney, chim chim cheroo..." sings one of the Americans sitting behind me.

"Chim chim cheroo..." whispers the small girl sitting next to me as she digs into her ice cream.

I now know why the walls are red.

This is my hell.

All the audience are all demons sent to torture me, to the tune of this gawd-awful musical.

There's nothing for it, but to surrender to my fate, letting this irritatingly cheerful tunes swarm around me.

Up ahead, the Whatsapp Woman gets her phone out again, but an interval has passed since last she tried and and someone must have complained to the front of house team because the usher is ready and waiting.

She runs down the aisle, and bringing out her torch flashes it right into the Whatsapp Woman's eyes.

Dazzled, the woman quickly puts away her phone.

Ha.

Sadly, the usher can't pull the torch flashing trick on the cast, and I'm forced to sit through this overly long show. How they can turn drag out this lack of narrative for nearly three hours would almost be impressive if it wasn't stuffed full of filler. I amuse myself by playing dramaturge and picking out all the bits I would cut. The vase? Smash that. The shop in the park? Close it down. The statue? Bury it,

I am rudely brought back by the cast encouraging us to clap along with their singing. Which is just mean. Everyone knows I have no rhythm.

I do my best, but my heart isn't in it.

And as soon as the house lights are up, I'm already out of my seat and pulling on my coat, unable even to wait for the orchestra to finish up.

Let's just hope I don't fall in that piranha tank on the way out. This is not the theatre I want to be haunting in the afterlife.

Death of a Marathoner

"You do stil appreciate a three and a half hour film that starts at eight o'clock though," says a man with a soothing voice to his companion.

"Yeah," says the companion, doubtfully.

But he follows on willingly enough.

Three and a half hours. That's a hell of a long film. No matter what the start time. And it's an even longer play. What with the interval and all.

I've decided that I don't like intervals. Not just because of the extra time they add. But because their very existence means that playwrights think they can use them. When I finish this marathon and am crowned Queen of Theatre, the first law that I pass will be to ban intervals. Theatres will have to apply for special dispensation in order to break their shows in the middle. That'll see those run times tumbling down. No more waffling on with all those endless words. Playwrights will have to get to the point and wrap things up in ninety minutes if they don't want walkouts from people who can't cross their legs for longer than that. It will be the golden age of theatre. That is until the bar sale figues come through and ticket prices have to be hiked up in order to compensate, but by then I'll already have been exiled to some island where I will be forced to manage a little community puppet theatre where half the cast have been chewed up by the local cows. So, you know, I'm not really going for legacy here with my tyrannical rule.

Anyway, I'm back in the West End tonight, hitting up this theatre a little later than planned because of the small matter of their roof caving in.

Yup, I'm at the Piccadilly for a touch of Death of a Salesman.

Well, three and a bit hours of Death and a Salesman.

Still, it's nice to be back. I don't think I've been to the Picadilly since Viva Forever!. Yup. The Spice Girls musical. At the time it felt prescient that they'd tucked away that show in the most hidden West End theatre, far away from the gawping zombies wandering around Picadilly Circus. But it looks like the producers of Salesman have tried to counteract this out-of-the-way location by using the bright, pinkest pink that Pantone to come up with for the show's signage.

Pink seems to be rather the colour of theatre at the moment. The Place has Barbified themselves in their rebrand. Over on the other end of Shaftesbury Avenue, & Juliet has embraced the Schapirrelli. And now Death of a Salesman has got in on the action.

I can't say hot pink really screams Arthur Miller to me, but not gonna lie. It looks really good.

The pink positively glows out of the darkness. Making the rest of this cramped corner of London retreat into the background. I can barely even see the pubs and the cafes over this assault on my eyes happening in front of me.

And it's sure done its job. Even with the threat of having a whole theatre collapse on top of our heads, there's a queue of people waiting to get in.

But I'm soon through the door and into the foyer, where there is a massive box office right in the middle. One of those circular desks that makes me feel like I've just walked into the reception of Mode Magazine. And yes that was an Ugly Betty reference. I've already classed this up with the Spice Girls, might as well reach deep into the depths to pull out all my embarrassing viewing habits now.

"Next!"

"Next!"

"Next!"

The three box officers are powering through the queue.

It's my turn.

"Next please!"

I bounce over.

"Hi! The surname's Smiles?" I say as quick as I can. We're working on a faster pace then the rest of theatre world in here. "S. M. I. L. E. S."

He nodes and goes to the pigeon holes in the back.

"Maxine?"

Yup. That's me.

"That's one ticket in the stalls," he says, pointing to the nearest door. "Next!"

"Any bags open, please!" says the guy on the door. He mimes opening a bag just in case I didn't get it. I open it, and clicking his torch into action, he gives the contents a quick sweep before waving me through.

Through the door. Down the stairs.

I find myself on a small landing.

More stairs lead down to the Stalls bar. It looks busy, even from up here. I don't think I'll be going in there.

Besides, I've spotted something far more interesting. There's a programme seller wandering around, holding out his wares in the classic fan formation so beloved by West End theatres.

"Can I get a programme?" I ask him.

He immediately spins round all big grin and even bigger energy.

"Of course you can, my love! That's four pounds."

"Do you have change for a tenner?" I ask, peering into my purse and thinking, not for the first time this week, that I really need to clear it out. "Oh! I have a five!" I say triumphantly, as I spot a green note crumpled up with an old receipt.

"Either is fine," says the programme seller.

I give him the five. Immediately regretting it. Fives are precious. Oh well. It's gone now.

"There's you pound change, and your programme. Enjoy!"

The auditorium is almost empty. Everyone is still camped out in the bar.

I walk to the front, near the stage and turn back, looking at the ceiling. Whatever happened up there the other week, I can't see it from here.

I reach into my bag and try to dig out my glasses, but there's so much stuff in there I can't find them. Oh well. Better find my seat now. The investigative journalism can wait until the interval.

Row G.

A. B. C. D...

There we are.

Two ladies are already on the end of the row.

"Can I squidge past?" I ask one of them.

She moves, and as I set down my bag next to them, she mumbles something.

"Sorry?"

"Orley's friend?"

I blink at her. I must have misheard. "Sorry, I can't hear you...?" I say, sliding down towards her.

"You Orley's friend?"

No? “No?"

"Oh."

She turns away. Our interaction now officially over.

I go back to my seat and start rummaging around for my glasses. They have to be in here somewhere. Umbrella? Check. Purse? Check. Makeup bag? Check. Collection of empty cough sweet wrappers? Check and check and check and check. But no glasses. Shit.

Okay, don't panic. It's not like my eyesight is that bad. I only wear them at the theatre. I'm sitting in the stalls. In row G. That's basically right in front of the stage.

It's fine.

My neighbour takes off her coat and starts arranging it on her seat. Setting up a cushion for herself, instead of shoving it underneath like a normal person.

"Sorry," she says, noticing me watching her fussing. "I'm trying to get comfortable."

I want to tell her that one of the key components of getting comfy is not trying to balance oneself ontop of a puffer coat, but I hold myself back. I don't want to get myself involved in another Orley loop.

Instead, I try to focus on my surroundings.

This requires a good deal of squinting.

But even without my glasses I can make out the hugely tall boxes on either side of the stage. And the pistachio green walls, which if you ask me, is a severely underused shade in theatre.

I'm starting to get a headache. I realign my vision to something closer. The chairs.

They're nice chairs.

They have scalloped backs. Very smart.

"Helloooooo," calls out my neighbour, flapping her hand in the direction of a newcomer. "Orley!"

Orley looks over. "Hellooooo," she calls back. "You're right at the end!"

"We were just talking about the collapse!"

"In Venice?"

"No. Here!" My neighbour gets out a small pair of binoculars and points them at the ceiling. "I can't see! I think it fell further that way."

A voice booms out telling us not to take photos, and reminding us to turn off our phones. "Turn them OFF!"

Bit intense, but okay. I mean, I'm not actually going to turn my phone off. But I'll put it on airplane mode, which is practically the same thing.

As the lights dim, an usher runs forward and orders a man in the front row to remove his coat from the stairs leading up to the stage. Honestly, some people think theatres are an extension of their living room. Which I don't get at all. My living room looks nothing like this. It's a lot smaller. Although I am tempted to paint it green now.

Actors appear all over the place. In the boxes. Walking down through the stalls and up the uncoated stairs.

And... now, I admit this may just be because I've lost my glasses and everyone on stage is suffering from a severe case of blurry face, but... it's kinda dull.

In fact it's really fucking boring.

So, okay, I'm not a great fan of Arthur Miller. The Crucible is literally one of the most tedious plays I've ever seen. But this is just... the movement is so... and they're all talking in the most...

Yeah, I'm not into it. I'm like super not into it.

I let my eyes unfocus and I drift into my own little world, as the words just go on and on. For hours.

"Be careful someone doesn't stand on your coat!" warns my neighbour as I stand up to let her pass in the interval.

I give it a kick to get it out the way.

She raises an eyebrow and steps over the sleeve, which is still hanging limply in her path.

Oh well. I refuse to be precious about my possessions.

"Can I just leave everything?" asks my other neighbour, Orley's friend. She indicates the small mountain of possessions that she's piled up on her seat.

"Of course!" I say with a wave of my hands that I hope indicates that I am very trustworthy and responsible, and her puffer coat won't be receiving any kicks from me.

Now with space either side of me, I use the opportunity to twist back in my seat and look up the circle. It's empty. No one is sitting up there.

I consider chancing it. Evading the ushers and climbing all the way up to see what's happening up there. But, I have a puffer coat to guard. And besides, I'm worn out. This play is like a lead weight strapped between my shoulders.

I try reading the programme, but find myself just looking at the pictures, unable to concentrate.

If good theatre leaves you energised, then this must be one of the worst plays I'm ever seen.

Bloody Miller.

"I'm not moving again," snaps the young woman sitting behind me as someone tries to escape the row to go to the loo. Looks like I'm not the only one having trouble with that heavy lead weight. "It's ridiculous."

But as people return from the bar and the toilets and their smoke breaks, she manages to get up long enough to let them back in.

The second act starts and I sink into a stupor.

I don't care about any of these characters. They all talk too much.

Orley's friend leans over to her companion. "There's going to be a big bang," she whispers. "He's going to kill himself."

And with that spoiler still hanging in the air, there's a big bang. And he kills himself.

At last. It's over.

Okay, one more scene, then it's over.

Alright, this must be the final scene.

Oh, there's singing now?

Gawd. When will they let me leave already?

Blackout. Finally. And I find myself rolling my eyes so hard I almost groan with the effort.

All around, people get to their feet to applaud. But I can't do it.

That lead weight is holding me in place.

As the actors disappear off stage, I lean down to grab my coat before stumbling to my feet. I've never felt so tired in all my life.

Thirty theatres still to go.

Shake it off

I'm stuck somewhere in the middle of the junction between Shaftesbury Avenue and High Holborn, waiting for the traffic to find itself around all the road works. But even from my little island I can see the queues stretching all the way out of Shaftesbury Theatre and down the road.

People clog the pavement on both sides.

A wedge of solid humanity balancing on that small corner, and spilling right into the road.

The lights change and I manage to make it across the road, but that's as far as I can get. Every inch of this pavement is blocked.

Among the crowd people in waterproof jackets holding up small laminated signs with the logos of various ticketing companies on them.

I try to spot the familiar TodayTix red, but if they are here, I can't see them.

Looks like I'm heading to the box office. If I can even get in.

I join a queue at random. There seems to be at least three of them going on. And all of them have a mixture of people who are already clutching their tickets, and those feverously looking up confirmation emails on their phone.

"Where do we go if we have tickets?" sighs a young girl standing on tip toes to look around.

"I know, right?" says her friend. "This is so unhelpful!"

A woman standing in front of me flags down one of the waterproof coat crew.

"You don't happen to know where the box office is?"

He does. He points through the door where we can just about make out a sign stating "Box Office."

Right, well at least our queue is pointed in the right direction.

Slowly, oh so slowly, we eek our way through the doors.

"If you don't have a bag, you can go straight through," says a bag checker, ignoring the fact that there's nowhere to go. The foyer is just as rammed as the pavement.

I make it through the bag check and stand blinking in the entrance, trying to work out how the hell to get over to that box office.

In the chaos, a collection of people have gathered in what could almost be called a line. I join the end of it, and sure enough, we start moving, ever so slowly, towards the box office windows.

As the last person in front of me picks up their tickets, the woman at the window grins at me. I start forward, but the crowd have sensed the vacuum and is pouring into it.

But my box officer keeps eye contact, smiling encouragingly, drawing me through until I collapse out the other side.

"What's the surname?" she asks before I even have a chance to open my mouth.

I tell her, spelling it out in case she can't hear me over all this noise. But she's nodding. She's got it. And she's off to the back of the office to pull the Ss from their pigeon hole.

"Maxine?" she says, returning to the window.

That's me.

Okay then. I've got my ticket. I should probably go find a programme now.

There's a merch desk just behind me, and after a bit of shoving I make it through.

"Can I get a programme?" I ask, slightly out of breath after my exertions.

"That's seven pounds," says the merch desker promptly. There's no room for nonsense round these parts.

"Can I pay by card?" I ask, unsure I can summon up an entire seven quid in cash.

He nods and we go through the rest of our transaction in silence. I can't blame him.

By the looks of it, he's already sold hundreds of the things. I can see those shiny hot pink covers all over the place. I'd be sick of talking too.

No time to inspect the programme properly though. I need to get out of the scrum before I get trampled.

"Too many fucking people," growls a middle-aged man as he barges past me.

I stagger, clinging onto my hot pink programme as I regain my balance.I think I should probably go find my seat now.

I'm in the circle tonight. I follow the signs and go up the stairs, immediately feeling better as the crowds thin out. Crystal wall lights send simmering shadows skittering around the stairwell, soothing my battered nerves. I let my elbows drop out of their protective stance.

I've been to a lot of West End theatres at this point. Very almost nearly all of them. Only three more to go. So I think I've said everything there is to say about them. There are boxes and pillars and mouldings and velvet seats. And yeah, I like the Shaftesbury. It's a very nice theatre. Got all those Edwardian accessories that really do it for me. Just plush enough that you feel a bit fancy as you take your seat, but no so plush that you stress about the hole in your tights.

Excitement is high.

Now that everyone has made it out of the caning factory downstairs, the chatter is buzzing. Everyone gets out their phone to take a picture of the huge & Juliet sign on stage.

A performer appears on stage and serves up some quality b-boying action.

He's soon joined by a few other cast members and they get their groove on while the house fills up. I get up to let a couple past. The bloke steps right on my foot and I cry out in pain. He immediately leaps up and apologises. Which is a first. And much appreciated.

Still, doesn't no much for my poor crushed toes, which are currently throbbing away into my boot.

The cast is getting the stage ready. One of them dangles her legs off the edge of the stage and chats with the front row. Another is attempting to finish that sign. They get the first ‘o’ of Romeo rigged up, but there's no time to finish it off. We're starting.

Oliver Tompsett's Shakespeare appears. He's just finished another play and he's rather pleased with it. But as he takes his players through the plot points, he soon finds out that they're not overly keen on the ending. Even his wife is having trouble getting behind such a tragedy.

Something needs to be done. And Cassidy Janson's Anne Hathaway is the one to fix it.

Romeo and Juliet is getting a reboot.

With some quality pop songs to help matters along. The audience laughs with shocked delight as we're launched into Larger than Life. And I am fucking loving it. Yes. This is what I want. I too dislike Romeo and Juliet as a story. Not for the same reasons as Ms Hathaway, I must admit. But whatever, I can see no problem with tearing that damned story to shreds and packing it wall to wall with absolute bangers.

Plus, the having Romeo as a total fuckboy... let's be real. That's pretty much canon, isn't it? Finally, someone just had the guts to say it. So, when we get Jordan Luke Gage's version of him, dressed like an emo Ken doll, dancing on his own coffin, while wearing a pink rucksack and singing Bon Jovi... I am done. Spent. In love. 

And that's before we even get to Miriam Teak-Lee who is... I mean... that voice. That hair. She's just fucking everything. 

This is literally the greatest show I've ever seen in my life.

Yes, it is also the most stupid show I've ever seen in my life. But why does everything have to be clever? This is silly. And fun.

And... it's the interval.

Thank goodness, because my heart is pounding and I need a few minutes to cool off.

"I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't this," muses the girl sitting in front of me. "It's very entertaining," she adds hurriedly. 

I get out the programme to have a look. That's lots going on it here. No boring biogs with a few cursory production photos to justify the price, oh no. There are notes from the director and the designers, and the book writer.

There's also a synopsis of the original play, just in case anyone in the world has managed to get to this stage in their life without absorbing the plot through cultural osmosis.

And an entire double-page spread about Max Martin. Slightly at odds with the more humble title of 'Who is Max Martin?'. But considering he's the man who pretty much soundtracked my formative years with all those Britney classics, I'll allow it.

The safety curtain is down. Reversed so it looks like we are the ones on stage.

A few people are happy to play along, singing not untunefully to the music still blasting out into the auditorium.

I use the opportunity to inspect the place.

These seats really are comfortable. And my view is top-notch. That's because the seating is offset. I have a clear view between the shoulders of the two people sitting in front of me. I don't know why all theatres don't have this. It's great.

And when the second act starts, I don't miss a thing.

And, I mean, I'm going to be real here. I'm not sure how I feel about the non-binary character. No shade against Arun Blair-Mangat or anything. Nothing to do with the performance. But something about the way this character is being treated is bothering me. And, you know, as a cis, very gender-conforming, person, perhaps I'm not the one to have an opinion on this, so I'd be real interested if a sensitivity reader was brought in to look at the script. Does theatre even have sensitivity readers? I'm sure it does. They're just probably not called that. Well, whatever. I hope there was one.

Because I really want to love this show. Like, I really want to love this show. I'm enjoying it so fucking much.

Over on the far side, an usher leans right out over the railing in his best Juliet impression to get a good look of the stage. He doesn't want to miss and minute, and nor do I.

And when the bows are happening, and the audience starts standing up to applause, I don't even hesitate.

You know I don't give standing ovations lightly, but here I am, on a chilly Tuesday night, ovating the heck out of this show along with everyone else.

"That was so good," says a bloke as we all make our way down the stairs.

"I don't usually like jukebox musicals, but..." replies his date.

"So good. So good."

"And so unexpected!"

Well, I for one knew it would be great.

But still, I kinda get what he means.

That shocked laughter I mentioned earlier. That wasn't a one-off. Pretty much every song got it's own giggle opener as we collectively, as an audience, recognised the song and worked out how it was going to be used.

Sometimes it was a bit... yeah, I'm still uncomfortable about May singing I'm not a girl, not yet a woman. But Anne ordering Shakey to do rewrites to the tune of I Want It That Way... well, that was fucking genius.

And now I have to hobble away on my injured toes, and make it all the way home without embarrassing myself by humming on the tube.

We both know I'm not even going to make it till Camden.

A tale of two audiences

The big revolving entrance to the Opera House is broken again. A small sign tells us to use the side door.

Two ladies go ahead of me, pausing by the shop to gaze around with wide eyes.

"Where's the Linbury?" one of them asks the solitary security guard in an otherwise deserted entrance.

"Straight up there," he says, turning towards the main foyer area.

"First visit since they've done it up," she goes on, happily.

"Oh yeah?" he replies. "It's a lot better now. You'll love it."

I hope so.

Have to admit, I'm not particularly into the front of house areas. Too big. Too open. Too noisy. But I've seen pictures of the new Linbury and it does look rather swish. Like a cross between an upmarket car show room, and a tin of Quality Street.

I don't need to stop off at the box office. I've already got my ticket. Had it posted to me. I wasn't risking being stuck with an e-ticket. And getting it posted is the one way to guarantee it now. COBO seems to be a thing of the past round these parts.

I sweep through the cafe and down the very broad stairs into the depths of the opera house.

There's some sort of private reception going on here on the little half mezzanine. I keep on going, down into the bar area.

It's busy. People sitting around balancing glasses of wine and slick-looking programmes on their tables. I want me one of those.

Not the glass of wine.

I don't like wine.

I do however like programmes.

I mean, you know this already. But I think it's always worth reiterating. I like programmes. Love them, even.

Can't seem to find them though.

There are a few front of housers dotted around, but none of them are carrying that familiar fan formation of programmes so beloved by West End ushers. They don't do that here. Not at the Opera House. Far too déclassé.

Not sure where they are though. Back in the old Linbury there was a programme desk just at the foot of the stairs, but there doesn't seem to be anything like that now.

I take a tour of the room.

Nope. Nothing.

After a full minute of standing, befuddled by this lack of programmeage, I decide to go and look at the bar. Lots of theatres sell programmes at the bar. And there it is. Right at the end. A little section dedicated to the selling of programmes.

Not that you can tell. They don't have any on display. Just a little sign stating their price.

I suppose it doesn't do to show off the merchandise, like some filthy shop. 

"Can I get a programme?" I ask the chap behind the counter.

Oh gawd.

Only been here five minutes and I'm already thinking of people as 'chaps.' This place rubs off fast.

"That's five pounds," he tells me.

"Can I pay by card?"

"Of course!"

Of course.

I stick my card in the machine and he asks me if I want a receipt. I don't. The fewer records of my ridiculous programme expenditure, the better.

"Here you go, Madam," he says, handing over the programme.

Madam... Madam!

Oh my lord... I knew I was getting old, but I hadn't realised I'd hit 'Madam' age already. 

You know, when I was young, I always vowed not to be one of those old ladies that constantly complain about their age. And yet now I'm here, being called Madam... I'm damn well rebelling. 

Cheeky young sods should learn to keep their 'Madam's to themselves.

Still reeling, I make my way over to the auditorium. My ticket says to use door 2, and yup - there's door 2.

"Hello!" I say to the ticket checker as cheerfully as I can considering I've just been Madamed.

"Hello!" she says back, beeping my ticket with her ticket beeper. "It's just this level."

This level is the top level. Because I'm way cheaper than the tickets in this place. I have to say, I’ve timed my marathon well. People always like to tell me that I must be spending a fortune on this adventure of mine, but since the price-hike at ROH, I fancy I've rather been making a saving not coming to ballet on the reg anymore.

Still, I shouldn't complain. I only paid six quid to be here. Admittedly I'm standing. In the upper circle. On the side. But still. Six quid!

I hop up the steps to the standing platform and find my number amongst the small roundels stuck to the floor.

There I am. Number forty-two. The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.

Perfect.

No-where to put your bag though.

I mean yes: the ground. Obviously. But the platform has a sheer drop in front of it, and nothing to lean my stuff against. One wayward kick and my bag will be lost under the row of seats in front.

I form a protective wall with my jacket and nest my bag against it. That'll have to do.

Out in the bar, a bell rings.

A couple squeezes themselves down the length of the chairs to reach the empty seats at the end. They stare at them, confused.

"Is this row A?" asks the man, looking from his ticket, to the seat numbers, then back to his ticket.

The other residents of row A confirm that yes, it's row A.

He sighs. "Well, we'll sit here and if there's a problem..."

They look around for an usher, but there's none to be had. If any are posted inside the auditorium, they aren't hanging out in the Upper Circle.

The couple's neighbour gets out her phone and brings up the e-ticket, determined to work it out.

"Are you meant to be in the Upper Circle?" she asks, doubtfully.

Turns out they're not. "My mistake," he laughs. "As usual." They squeeze themselves back down the row, saying sorry for every bumped knee as they make their escape down to the superior seats of the Circle.

I brace myself for the barrage of standers, who always slip in as the lights go down, but nope. There's only three of us on this entire row.

Over the sound system comes a warning that there will be a pause between the first two pieces. And as the lights dim, it's my turn to slip down right to the end, where I can get the best possible view.

It's no good though.

Even from here I can barely see half the stage.

I lean forward, bracing my arms against the railing, resting my head against the pillar, and letting my heel slip down off the edge of the step.

From this very uncomfortable position, I manage to carve our an extra metre or two of the stage for me to see. 

But it's of little help, as the first piece, The Kingdom of Back, starts, I'm left baffled. There's some great wig action going on. And some definite tension. But whether this tale of Mozart and his sister is pure narrative or merely a hook to hand some abstract moves on, I cannot tell.

At the other end of the platform, one of my fellow standers ducks under the railing and climbs out onto the edge of the balcony, perching himself on the corner.

Fucking hell, that looks dangerous.

I'll admit, I don't know anything about theatre design, but something tells me that if audiences are having to resort to parkour in order to see anything, then neither the people who were actually paid to come up with this arrangement don't know much either.

A front of houser appears, placing a latecomer into an empty seat, detached from the rest of the row.

I hope she doesn't see our friend Tarzan.

He's still out there, hanging over the edge.

The front of houser retreats with a whispered message that the latecomer can move to her proper seat in the pause.

The Mozart piece ends and we all applaud. I join in. I have no idea if it was good or not, but I do like the Northern Ballet dancers, so I'm sure they gave it their mostest.

The front of houser reappears.

"Perhaps you'd like to go to your seat now?" she asks the latecomer in the naughty chair. "You have two minutes."

The latecomer indicates that she is quite happy where she is.

"Don't worry," says the front of houser. "Stay to the interval."

So she does, sticking resolute in her front row seat as we sail into the second piece. Mamela... With the ellipsis. So you know it's modern. That's the only way I can tell. Six whole dancers and I spend most of my time staring at an empty stage.

I try to remember if it was ever so bad in the old Linbury, and I don't think it was. As my view empties once more of anything to look at, I try to work out why that is.

It doesn't take me long.

The old standing areas didn't have seats in front of them. You were right up against the edge, not pushed back against the wall. Turns out, that makes a hella lot of difference.

You don't expect sightlines to get worse after a redesign, but here we are. I'm almost impressed. Those architects worked hard to make sure the povvo's couldn't see anything.

The music's not bad though. Very Max Richter. So Max Richter that as soon as the interval hits I have to get out the programme to check that it's isn't his work. Nope. The next piece is. But not this one. It's Jack Edmonds. Who apparently writes the most Max Richter non-Max Richter music ever. Huh.

"Hello," says a voice from the foyer, where the front of houser is now standing guard at the door. "Where can I get a programme?"

"The far end there," says the usher.

Turns out I'm not the only one who was having trouble.

Tarzan ducks back under the railing and returns to the safety of the standing platform, much to my relief.

The last work of the evening now. The Shape of Sound. To Max Richter's Four Seasons. A piece of music I never get tired of. Which is a good thing, because it is much beloved by choreographers. I would tell you have many dance works I've seen set to this music, but I lost count after five. That Richter chap must be rolling in all those royalties.

A bar of light sits across the back of the stage and the dancers wiggle their legs over it like can-can dancers.

This gets a gasp from the audience down in the stalls. A gasp which stops dead at the circles. Which makes me think there's some visual effect getting hidden to those based up here. A few more intakes of breath punctuate the music as Winter comes to an end and I kinda wish I'd invested in a better seat. But... eh.

I'm glad I've seen the worst that the Linbury has to offer. Six pounds a ticket to see half a show. Not entirely sure it was worth it.

Severed fingers and vacuum loos

"I'll be five minutes!" I text Allison. "Grab a table?"

Allison texts back in the affirmative. She's on it.

I run up Kingsway on my own mission.

I stop at the corner of Portugal Street and pull my phone out of my pocket, taking a picture of the theatre as I catch my breath. Right, that’s done. It's time to pick up the tickets.

I have to hang back as young people pour of the long line of doors. Very young people. Children. The matinee must have just got out. I have timed this spectacularly badly.

They look happy though. The young people. Must be a good show.

Eventually the flow stills and I manage to get inside.

The Peacock is a funny old theatre. It spends most of it's time as a lecture hall for LSE. I've even been to a lecture here. Back when I thought doing a PhD might be a viable way of escaping my career crisis. Turns out it wasn't, and instead I chose the route of quitting my job and taking an unpaid interneship in the arts instead. Not quite sure that worked out either...

Anyway, I'm here. At The Peacock. A venue I technically work for, so I need to be on my best behaviour.

Up the steps and over to the box office, lurking in the shadows at the back of the foyer. I head over to the box officer I recognise.

"Can I pick up tickets for Smiles?" I ask. "Staff tickets," I add, just in case I look different outside of fierce yellow light of the office kitchen.

She grabs the pile of staff ticket forms and pulls mine out before going back to her seat to start tapping away at her computer.

"At least it's warm in here," I say, doing my best to fill in the awkward silence. "It's freezing out there."

"The weather has changed," she agrees. "There you go. Two pounds."

Bloody bargain.

I look at the tickets. Two of them. Central stalls.

Epic bargain more like.

All that friendly kitchen banter has clearly done the trick. Moral of the story, always be nice to box officers. They have the power, and should be respected.

A message comes through from Allison. She has a table.

Fuck. Okay. Better run.

Tickets stuffed in pocket, I pull my jacket tight around me, brace myself for the cold, and hurry back the way I came, hopping from foot to foot as I wait for the traffic lights to change on Kingsway, rounding the Aldwych and slipping through the doors of the Delauney Counter.

I love the Delauney Counter, with its old fashioned gentility, and attentive staff, and schnitzel sandwiches.

I think it might be my favourite place in London. Instant calm as soon as I walk through the door.

Even with the counter covered in white chocolate ghost masks for Halloween.

Allison has a table, as promised. And we both spend far too long pouring over the menu before deciding that the perfect accompaniment to schnitzel sandwiches is a salted caramel hot chocolate.

Bless the waiter. He didn't even wince the teeniest bit as he takes our horror-show order. He has truly got into the Halloween spirit.

"I'm going to take a photo of you," says Allison, getting out her phone.

Turns out, the fact that I'm wearing my Greggs t-shirt in a fancy-arse Austro-Hungarian cafe is pretty darn amusing. I do my best to pose, but you know I'm not good with photos.

At least the salted caramel hot chocolates are good. So thick you have to eat them with a spoon. And surprisingly, alternating sips with mouthfuls of pickles doesn't make you want to boak.

Which is a bonus.

A waiter comes over and very sweetly tells us that they are closing in five minutes, and would it be alright if we pay our bill and leave please.

It would. But could they add one of those darling bags of Halloween biscuits to it, please very much and thank you?

"Look!" says Allison, as the waiter brings it over and sets it reverently on the table. "It has a witches hat! And a black cat!"

It does have a witch’s hat. And a black cat. But more importantly: "It has a severed finger in it!" I squeak, way too excited by the idea of a bloody finger sitting among my snacks.

Bill paid and scarves on, we venture back outside.

"It's. So. Cold," I complain as we make our way to The Peacock, regretting with every step that I didn't order another hot chocolate to go.

The foyer is now buzzing with slightly older children. The under-tens shifted off for an early night, while their teen brothers and sisters take over for the 6pm show.

At the top of the stairs, a front of houser stands, holding up a handful of programmes, spread out in a fan.

I stop.

I don't need to buy one. Someone will leave a pile on my desk at some point. But I can't help but look all the same.

I made those. Well, I mean. I wrote the brief and asked people more talented then me to make them. But still. I did that. I made that happen. And I won't be doing it again. I'm leaving my job next week, and that programme was the last one I sent to print. My last ever programme, quite possibly.

As we head down the stairs I stop to take a photo of the merch desk, with its long line of programmes just waiting to be bought.

I hope people do.

"Where are we sitting?" asks Allison.

"Stalls," I say proudly. It's not often that I get to take people to the good seats.

"Stalls is one level down," says a programme seller as we pass. "Or the circle is just through here."

"Thank you!" we say as we pass, breezing down another level to the fancy seats.

The bar down here is busy. But I have to say, it's not very nice. Even the long mirror, with it's row of globe-lights can't help lift the grey walled basement we're in right now.

"I might go to the loo?" I say. This show isn't short. And we did just drink a small vat of chocolate.

Turns out, that's not such an easy thing at The Peacock. Oh, sure. They have them. There isn't even a queue. But when you get yourself in one of those cubicles, those loos are...

"That was a really weird toilet," I say to Allison when we find each other back in the bar.

"That was a really weird toilet," she agrees. "It's like... are we on an aeroplane?"

It was like being on an aeroplane. There was a lid that needed to be unclicked. And then reclipped. And buttons. And vacuum suction.

It was really fucking weird. I can't believe I haven't been to the loos here before. All these years, and they've been there. With their lids. And their vacuum. And I didn't even know.

I get out my phone to make a note of that.

Allison laughs. "Are you making notes about the really weird toilet?"

I roll my eyes. "Yeah. Sorry."

"It's like: what on earth?!"

Yeah. What on fucking earth?!

I get out my compact to powder my nose. Those loos were so baffling I hadn't wanted to stick around in there to use the mirror.

"You're such a lady," says Allison, laughing as she imitates my actions.

Yeah, well. Some of us have shiny noses that we have to contend with.

"Shall we go in?" I suggest.

We both look at the nearest door into the auditorium.

"Is it this one?" I ask. "What does it say on the sign?"

At this point, I should probably put on my glasses. But you know how bad I am at wearing them. And besides, I've got Allison with me.

We decide that this is, actually, the correct entrance and I show our tickets to the front of houser on the door.

"Yup," she says. "Turn right at row J."

So we do, walking past all those rows of red velvety seats until we reach row J, and then turn right.

There's a family sitting behind us. They look very excited.

And even better. They have a programme.

I like them immediately.

"Please try not to crease the pages," says the mum, handing it down the line.

It's nice to see paper products being properly handled. It's what they deserve. Trees died to make them, after all.

I look around.

There's quite a lot of programmes being flicked through and read in here. It's very pleasing. I find myself watching a couple read the biographies section together. One of them looks up, and I have to turn away very quickly before he realises I was creeping on his reading habits.

Thankfully, the lights are dimming and we're off.

Some Like it Hip Hop.

It's fun, but I'm not a big fan of dance shows having a narrator. Like, either your choreography has the power to tell a story, or it doesn't. And if it's that latter, then maybe it's not the right medium for the narrative. Ya know?

In the interval, the girls sitting next to us try to get out.

"Sorry, darling," one says to the other. "I don't know where to stand!"

The first one struggles over the second's knees, stumbling as she does so. "Sorry, I'm sitting in your lap!"

The safety curtain comes down, and I stare at it.

"There's projections," I say, as a rotating carousel of show trailers plays up on the beige curtain. "I swear they didn't do that the last time I was here."

I mean, I know I've been neglecting my own venues this year. What with having to go to every other fucking venue in London. But my lack of knowledge about this theatre is starting to get embarrassing.

"Ooo!" I say, as the trailer for Galactik Ensemble comes up. "We should go see that one! It looks amazing. The set is trying to kill them!"

"Like The Play That Goes Wrong?"

"I guess..." I mean, sure. More circusy and French. But sure.

As the interval draws to a close, Allison and I stand up to let them pass.

"Don't sit down, we're leaving again," they say, grabbing their coats before slipping back the way they came.

A pile-up forms in our row, as they round on those trying to get back in.

"What's happening?" asks Allison.

"I have no fucking idea. Are they going-going or just moving?"

Whereever they are, the lights are going down again and they're going to be missing the second act.

Time slips by quickly in a torrent of song and dance, with way more story than my stupified brain can cope with. But the loud music and mega moves are keeping me awake.

And when the audience jumps to their feet for a standing ovation, I'm more than happy to join in with them.

That is, until the cast wants to get us moving.

I back against my seat.

Allison looks over at me and laughs. "You're not joining in?" she asks as everyone around us waves their arms over their head.

I shake my head. "I am not joining in."

The cast busy themselves teaching everyone a few moves and I hold myself very tightly until it's all over. I can't be having with that sort of thing. It's too much to ask of someone who can't even clap a beat.

"That was great!" says Allison.

"It was fun," I agree. "Bit heteronormative, but fun."

Allison nods. "Yeah. That scene with the daughter..."

"They could have been such a cute lesbian couple!"

"Yeah, she could find out that the other one is actually a woman..."

"And then still be super into it!"

And we're off. Dramaturging our own version of the show all the way to the tube station and deciding that we would be really good at it.

"How do you become a dramaturge?" asks Allison.

I have no fucking idea... How do you become a dramaturge?

On the tube journey back to Hammersmith, I pull the ribbons free from my Delauney bag and nibble on the witch's hat.

Turns out that biscuits covered in black icing are really not suitable for consuming in public.

As I wash my face before bed, I find my lips have been stained completely black.

Which, I've got to admit, is a look. But not sure one I'll be rocking again any time soon.

Fred attends a Fancy First Night

Another week, another new London theatre. It would almost be hilarious if it wasn’t literally killing me.

Oh well. Off I go. To the West End this time. Which makes a nice change.

Turn off Shaftesbury Avenue into Wardour Street, slip into Peter Street and, gosh. There it is. There’s no missing it. The place has been decked out in balloons.

It’s opening night and the Boulevard Theatre is here to party.

I stand on the opposite pavement to get a good look at it.

Two buildings, rising either side of a walkway, and linked by a glass bridge. Lots of glass. The whole thing seems to be mainly glass. The huge windows reveal the first audiences scurrying about, exploring the space, getting drinks, staring at the massive staircase the dominates the second building. Usually I hate those glassy walls. Too vulnerable-making. I like spaces I can hide in. But somehow, this place manages to exude warmth. Even on a chilly October evening.

Must be the balloons.

There are two security guards on the door. I slow down as I approach, just in case they want to check my bag. But they make no effort to stop me, and I walk on through uninterrupted, finding myself in a small lobby that makes me feel I’m about to check into a small, but very smart, hotel.

I give my surname to the box officer.

“And what’s the first name?” he asks.

I give it.

“Can you confirm the postcode?”

I hesitate. Two step authentications. That’s a first.

Well, I suppose there’s no telling how many Maxine Smileses there are in the house tonight.

Well… there is. Because I’m the only one. I mean that literally. There was another, but she got married and double barrelled up her surname. So now there’s just me. And I’m here. Having to remember my postcode.

I manage to dredge it up from the depths of my memory.

Satisfied, he hands over the ticket. “That’s up the stairs and across the bridge,” he says with the type of grin box officers are only able to summon up on their first day.

I follow his instructions. Up the curling stair that lurks just off to one side, and over the bridge.

I find myself in a restaurant. A very swanky restaurant. With pink walls covered in pictures. A very swanky restaurant that is also a very busy restaurant.

Too busy for me.

You know I’m not a fan of crowds.

I retreat back across the bridge and towards the stairs. There’s a little enclave here. With windows overlooking Peter Street. And a counter to lean on. And potted plants. It’s very soothing.

“Yeah, she worked as a stripper,” a very loud-voiced bloke says as he plods up the stairs.

“Who?” comes the equally loud-voiced reply.

“Vicky.”

“Who’s Vicky?”

I never get to find out who Vicky is because the pair of them disappear off across the bridge, and their loud voices are swallowed up by the even louder hubbub of the restaurant.

No matter, the vacuum of their presence is soon filled by a couple of front of housers.

“Everyone’s happy,” says one. “Everyone’s got a drink.”

“It’s going really well.”

“It’s really exciting.”

“People will be sat in their chairs, with their drinks…”

Something tells me that a key component of the Boulevard’s business plan is based on bar sales.

Another front of houser comes up the stairs.

He is immediately rounded on.

“Have you left your position?”

The newcomer admits that he has left his position.

“Stay in your position!”

He returns to his position.

More people are arriving. Audience members this time.

Despite the instructions to cross the bridge, each and every one of them turns the corner and walks into my enclave.

“Nothing here!” they say, before darting back the way they came, as if the joy of this enclave was not precisely that fact.

As yet another person rounds on me, tutting under their breath at the lack of facilities in this dead end, I realise I’m not going to get the hermit-cave I crave. It’s time to move on.

Now, the sign on the wall says that the stalls are upstairs. But my ticket says I’m sitting in the pit. There is no sign for the pit. I dither, debating with myself as to whether ‘pit’ is a synonym for ‘stalls’.

The front of housers have all moved all. Presumably back to their positions.

Fuck it, I’m going to the stalls. I’m sure someone will stop me if I’m not meant to be there.

Back into the restaurant, and I head to the massive staircase that I had seen from the street belong.

A front of houser stands sentinel at the base.

“Have you got your ticket?” he asks, eyeing me up with just the tiniest trace of suspicion. I must look like a right wrong’un.

I pull it out my pocket and show it to him.

“Great!” he says, suddenly all smiles and enthusiasm. “The house isn’t actually open yet, but there’s a bar.”

Super.

I head on up.

No pink walls up here. No pictures either.

There is a piano, and dark blue walls. But other than that, it is entirely plain. And I’ll admit, a little unfinished looking. Like they blew the budget on the massive staircase before they reached the upper levels.

No matter. At least it’s not too crowded up here.

There’s also a bridge.

I go and stand it in, marvelling at the neon lights advertising the tattoo parlour next door.

The floor is glass too, but frosted up like a lace doily to prevent under up-skirt surprises for the people passing underneath.

The space starts to fill up as we all wait for the house to open. As my empty bridge comes under attack, I look around for somewhere else to stand, and spot something.

A programme. Sitting on top of the bar.

I’d been wondering about those.

Front of housers running about all over the place and none of them holding programmes.

Somehow I’d managed to convince myself that there weren’t any. It’s surprising the amount of theatres that can’t get it together enough to have programmes delivered in time for first night. Not my theatre you understand. Three years on the job and I’ve never missed an opening night when it comes to programmes. But you know… other theatres. The ones without a publications officer in constant fear of her job.

But it looks like whoever is in charge of programmes at the Boulevard is totes on top of things too, because there they are. Or rather, there one is. Single and solitary, sitting on the bar, just waiting to be picked up by any fellow passing with a full wallet.

I head on over, ready to claim my papery darling.

“Can I get a programme?” I ask the guy behind the bar.

“Of course you can!” he says with a wide grin.

“And can I pay by card?” I ask. I have cash, but I never like using it if there’s a card machine going.

“You can only pay by card,” he tells me.

“Even better.”

From behind the counter he brings out a fresh programme, and balances it on the bar so it’s standing up straight and proud.

That’s a really nice touch. Next he’ll be offering to gift wrap it for me.

He doesn’t though. Instead he grabs the card machine.

“Contactless?”

“Sadly not,” I sigh.

“Old fashioned,” he says sympathetically.

“No, just broken.”

As I busy myself with my pin number, he glances over and spots my elephant purse, resting on the bar.

“I love your pencil case,” he says.

Now, my elephant is not a pencil case. He’s really not. He’s leather. Lined with satin. And hand made. But I can see where the confusion comes from. What with his flappy ears and swinging tail. I would have loved to have him as a pencil case when I was six years old.

“Does he have a name?” asks the bar guy.

“He does have a name. He’s Fred! I’ve had him for over ten years so he’s a bit old and sad now.”

“He doesn’t look old or sad,” says the bar guy as he takes back the card machine. “Enjoy the performance!”

Aww.

I know that was just great customer service bants, but still… I do love a bit of great customer service bants. Especially when they compliment my Fred.

“Hello everyone! The house is now open. Feel free to take your seats.”

As one, the occupants of the bar turn towards the auditorium doors.

I show my ticket to the ticket checker and she nods me through into a dark corridor.

Another ticket checker waits on the other side, poised to direct us around the space.

“Front row, just go around until you reach your seat.”

Looks like he means that literally, because the seats here are all in a circle.

I step down into the front row and pick my way through the slim space between the stage and the seating until I find my spot.

“I’m just here,” I say to my new neighbour as she makes to let me through.

She looks at me. “If you don’t mind me asking, how much did you pay for your ticket?” she asks.

I tell her. Twelve quid. I booked with the roulette option. The one where you don’t get to pick your seat in advance.

Turns out my neighbour did the same thing, and we are soon deep in discussion about the theatre.

“Is there a second row upstairs?” she asks.

I look up. “No, I don’t think so. It’s a spiral, they just have a little overlap over there,” I say, pointing to the spot in the balcony directly opposite us.

The seats around us begin to fill up.

“How much did he pay?” asks my neighbour, spotting a newcomer flapping around a large print-at-home ticket. “Can you see?”

I can see. He paid £28. And he’s only two seats away from us.

“Numpty,” I laugh. “Although, twenty-eight quid for front row in a central London venue isn’t bad. You’d pay more at the Donmar.”

“The Donmar also does ten-pound seats,” says my neighbour.

I shrug. I haven’t actually paid to go to the Donmar in years.

“Have you seen Dave Malloy’s work before?” she asks.

I admit that I haven’t.

“What sort of musicals do you like?”

I tell her that a current favourite is Come From Away. That seems like a safe bet right now. Mainstream enough that everyone has heard of it, but with just that level of quirkiness that I don’t get lumped in with the Lloyd Webber Phandom.

“Well, this is very different,” she says, knowingly. “Dave Malloy is very weird.”

“I’m okay with weird,” I tell her. “I’ve seen a lot of weird lately.”

“Not like this.”

I’m not sure what to make of that, but there’s no time to think about it because the lights are going down and the cast is out.

Zubin Varla takes his spot behind the piano and introduces the show.

Ghost Quartet, here we go. Give me your weird.

Within a few numbers, I’m completely lost. I have no idea what’s going on. At first I thought the songs completely disjointed, but recurring characters suggest there is some sort of narrative happening even if I can’t work out what it is.

Still, I’m not not enjoying it.

The space is so small, it’s hard not to get swept away by the intimacy of the whole thing. As Varla picks up a shawl to place around his shoulders, it brushes against my leg. When he turns his head to give a look of exasperation, his gaze hits our eyes.

I smile along, feeling my chair shake as the person sitting behind taps his foot along with the music.

Carly Bawden comes over, holding a small, circular basket. She offers it to me.

I grab something at random.

It’s a small, pink egg.

I look at it, utterly baffled by what it is, or what I’m supposed to do with it. But as my fellow front rowers dive in and select their own items, I see they are all shaking them in time with the music.

I give my pink egg an experimental shake. It rattles pleasingly. It’s a maraca. Of sorts.

I do my best, I really do. But asking someone how can’t even clap in time with a beat to offer percussive support is too much. I can’t handle that level of stress.

When the time comes to return my pink egg to the pot, I do it gratefully.

A song about whiskey starts with a crescendo of breaking glass, which I don’t think was intentional.

The cast run around, pulling out drawers of tumblers, and splashing the amber liquid into the glasses before handing them around the front row.

A few people refuse, but most clutch onto it gratefully, passing around an ice bucket to their fellow drinkers.

“Is that real whiskey?” asks my neighbour.

“It looks like it,” I whisper back, watching someone across the way give their glass a tentative sniff before downing it in one.

And then, with the greatest reverence in the world, a very small bottle is brought out. Sixteen-year-old whiskey. Only one glass. For one very special audience member.

No ice. Because that would be sacrilege.

The lucky audience member takes a sip and gives a thumbs up, before passing it to his friend to share.

In the background, the tech team rush around, trying to get to the stage. But there’s no easy way through.

Someone fetches a pan and brush, and as the song ends, he hands it to Maimuna Memon.

“First time you’ve seen an actor clean up real broken glass on stage,” says Memon as she bends down to sweep it up. “That’s all of it. I think.”

Stage now glass-free, probably, we’re onto the next song.

Keyed up on alcohol, the cast start handing out instruments. Simple ones first. Cymbals and triangles. The type you’d have a bash at in kindergarten.

But then they start handing over their own. Bawden teaches a girl a riff on the autoharp. Varla demonstrates a motif on the piano. A heavily pregnant lady is taught to bang a large drum. And then slowly, slowly, the cast leaves them too it.

Our laughter ends the play, replaced by a standing ovation as the lights come back up.

“Did you enjoy that then?” asks my neighbour as the cast finish their bows and disappear off stage.

I hesitate. “It was pretty. And interesting. But I had no idea what was going on.”

She nods. That’s the reaction she expected.

It’s time to go.

“If I can figure out how to get out of here,” I say.

“I was just going to say…” says my neighbour, examining the slim space between the stage and the seats, now packed with people putting on their coats and generally dawdling. “It comes across as rude to go over the stage.”

“Fuck it,” I announce. “I’m going for it.”

“I’ll follow you then.”

So we strike out, weaving through all the instruments on stage, trying not to trip over the trunks.

One of the musicians brought out onstage, the heavily pregnant lady who took up the drum, bends down to pick up a fallen rose petal. A memento of the show and her part in it.

On the way out, a front of houser hands me something. A business card sized flyer. Something about having a chance to win tickets if we tweet about the show.

I wonder if a blog counts…

If your name's not on the list

"Madam! Madam! The entrance is this way, the first left. Phoenix Street," comes the familiar call of the Big Issue seller on Charing Cross Road. 

I don't know how long he's been directing audiences to the correct entrance of the Phoenix Theatre, but he's there, keeping the crowds in check, almost every night I've been in the West End on this marathon.

I tweeted sometime back that the Phoenix should put him on the payroll, and I stand by that. He's already doing the work. Might as well make it official.

I am not in need of his assistance tonight though. I know where I'm going. Yes, onto Phoenix Street. But not to the Phoenix Theatre. I've already made my trip to the rock, and there's no time for a return trip before the marathon is over and I draw a thick Sharpie line under my theatre-going for the rest of my life.

I'm actually off to the theatre neighbour. The Pheonix Artist Club, which you might have rightly surmised, is not actually a theatre. But a club. For artists.

But as part of that remit, they have a programme of events. Cabaret. Music. Not marathon-qualifying stuff. Except tonight there's a scratch night. So off I go.

I've never been before. It's been on my list for years, but I never quite got round to it. And by that, I mean, I never managed to work out if I'm allowed in. I've heard from various people that you need to work in the arts to get access. But what that entails seems to differ depending on who you ask for. Some say it's members only. Others that you only need a business card proving you work in the industry to get through the door.

Oh well. No such restrictions exist for attending this show, so it looks like I'm finally getting my chance.

I tuck myself under the canopy and try my best to stay out of the rain as I use my final free minutes to edit a blog post. By the looks of it, this place is underground and I'm not sure what the WiFi situation is going to be down there.

A man comes over and starts singing to the guy next to me. "My old man's a dustman," he belts out, with hand motions to match. "How's your night going?"

The guy mumbles "fine thanks," before moving away.

"Excuse me, ma'am," says the Big Issue seller as he inches his way around me. His leading an entire procession of Come From Awayers. "That's the entrance down there," he tells them, pointing the way.

They thank him and skuttle through the rain towards the long queue where an usher with a strong Scottish voice is keeping everyone in check. "If you're collecting your tickets, it's the last door!"

Blog post vaguely proofread, I figure it's time to go in.

Or at least, try to.

There's someone standing in the doorway. He looks like he can't quite make up his mind about the whole thing.

Perhaps he also got confused about their entry requirements.

"Are you...?" I ask.

"No. Sorry. You go ahead."

So I do.

Inside there's a small podium desk. With a theatre mask stencilled on the front. Gold on blue.

The person ahead of me is trying to pick up their ticket. But by the sounds of it, their name isn't on the list.

Oh dear.

Even though I know I bought myself a ticket, I can feel the anxiety rising. Mainly because I never got a confirmation email. And yes, I checked my spam folder. Nothing. I have nothing to prove that I spent my coin to get in.

I look around in an attempt to distract myself.

There's plenty to look at. The ceiling is painted with a dramatic depiction of a bird. I'm guessing a phoenix, given where we are. Paintings line the stairwell, and there's a general sense of this place having been built into the remains of an antique store, with statues and chandeliers competing for attention.

The person ahead of me and the box officer appear to have reached an impasse.

"Let me just deal with this person," says the box officer and he leans around to beckon me forward.

"Hi, I'm here for the scratch night...?" I say, feeling more unsure about everything with every passing second.

"Yup!" says the box officer.

Well, that's one hurdle cleared at least. There is a show happening. And it's the one I thought it was.

"The surname's Smiles? S. M. I. L. E. S." I say.

He looks down the list. I shift my weight from foot to foot as he works his way down one page, and then another.

"How is it spelt?" he asks.

I spell it out for him again.

"Ah!" he says, alighting on my name. "Maxine?"

"Yup," I say with relief.

"Got it. Enjoy your evening!"

And with that, I'm off down the staircase and into the basement.

"Hiiii!" says a young man in a red waistcoat that I can only presume is an usher. Bit smart for this kind of joint, but I'm not complaining.

"Hello!" I say back. "Um, where's the best place to go?" I ask as I look around, trying to make sense of what is happening down here.

It looks like a regular old bar. Tables and chairs clutter the space. I can't even tell where the stage area is.

"Anywhere you can find to sit," he says with a wave of his arm. "Sit down."

He makes a fair point. There doesn't look like there are many options going spare. Might as well grab any chair going.

I creep around the edge until I find an empty table against the wall.

There are cast sheets on the table.

Hastily edited cast sheets. Someone as gone over one of the titles with a biro. It's ‘NOT Been Fingered, ’ rather than ‘NEVER Been Fingered.’ Better remember that.

Looks like there are seven of them in all (with the Not Been Fingered acting as our finale). I hope they're short. I was rather hoping for an early night.

Now that I'm settled, I can have a look around.

This place is not somewhere that has ever said no to decoration. Rows of headshots top the bar. Chandeliers and disco balls hang next to each other. The walls are covered with signed show posters. A few even making their way onto the ceiling, finding their way into the small scraps of space that aren't crowded with gilded panels that look like they got knicked sometime during the dissolution of the monasteries.

A group of red waistcoated young people rush into the middle of the room, onto a platform which I can't see, but I presume must be a stage.

They're not ushers at all. They're actors. Playing ushers. Or actors playing ushers while trying to make it as actors. Actors who, incidentally, I won't be naming as they are all acting students this evening. So really, they're... students trying to make it as actors, playing ushers, who are trying to make it as actors. All very meta. Anyway, they are not happy with the audience. Orders to turn off our phones fly in between sneers of disgust at our behaviour and mocking jibes at one another.

A great choice to start the evening. Make sure we're all on our best behaviour.

Between acts, a host comes on to keep the energy up and introduce all the players.

A woman sitting on the table in front turns around. "Can I take?" she asks, indicating one of the spare freesheets on my table.

I slide it over to her.

"Can we…?" This time it's the woman on the table next to me. She wants to bunk up at my table in pursuit of a better view. I slide across the bench, and both she and the guy she's with squidge in next to me. This bench really wasn't meant for three.

After the fifth short of the evening, featuring a woman awaiting her execution, our host returns to the stage. "I think it’s time for a five-minute break," she tells us. "Head to the bar and I'll call you back when we're ready to start."

There's a scamper towards the bar, and the exit, as those who've already seen their friends perform make a bid for escape.

The table next to me frees up and I no longer have to share my bench as the interlopers make their way over in search of better climes.

"Ladies and gentlemen and everything in between," says our host. "We are good to go. Ting! Ting! Ting!" she says, mimicking a theatre bell. Adding: "Shhhh," when that doesn't work.

As we make our way into the final two pieces a man comes over from the bar and gestures towards the space next to me on the bench.

I gesture back, to indicate that he's welcome to it.

After being squished for so long, I'm beginning to feel a little lonely back here all by myself.

We make it through to the end. Seven plays. And not a single dud. That must be a record. Okay, one dud. But out of seven, that’s still very impressive for a night of new writing.

Though, I am a little concerned as to what was wrong with that banana in the last one. At least it had a clear moral though: don't be eating fingered food.

The host brings back all the actors for one mega bow session, which really has to be the way to do it. None of this stop-starting with curtain calls. Save it all for the end.

"Is that what we just watched?" asks my new neighbour. He points over to my cast sheet.

I slide it over to him and he reads it while I get my applause on.

I can't help but sneak glances over to the other end of my table though.

I really hope he doesn't want to keep that cast sheet. I took pictures of it. I'm not an amateur over here. But still. I kinda want to take it home with me. And by kinda, I mean: I will literally be thinking about that lost cast sheet for the next fifteen years if he doesn't give it back.

He does, but whether that's due to his lack of interest in the more papery things in life, or the feeling of my narrowed eyes watching him carefully, I don't care to ask.

I check the time.

Twenty-past nine.

Right then. That's a challenge right there: bed by ten-thirty. Here we go.

Cast sheet in bag. Jacket on. Umbrella out. I'm off.

Extinction Ice Cream

Flags are waving. A drum is banging. Someone is giving an impassioned speech about trans rights. 

I creep through the closed roads around Trafalgar Square. 

An extinction rebellioner holds out a leaflet towards me, before thinking better about it and handing it to the bloke next to me. 

I’m almost offended. 

I recycle…

… when I remember. 

The police are all lined up across the top of Whitehall, their hi-vis jackets gleaming under the street lights. They are quite the sight. A shuffling barrier between the party in Trafalgar Square and the deserted street beyond. 

I stop to take a photo. I’m not the only one. The dome of the National Gallery rising up above the police and the protestors is one hell of a visual. 

A cyclist sails through the blockade and whizzes past me. 

It’s only then that I realise I’m standing in the middle of the road. We’re all standing in the middle of the road. Not only that, we’re standing in the middle of one of the busiest roads in London, and there’s not a car to be seen. 

I am going to make full use of this. 

Traipsing down a bit further, I stand right bang in the centre of the lane and aim my phone camera at the Trafalgar Studios. 

Perfect. 

I dither, looking around. 

I’m kinda enjoying standing here, in the middle of the road, with the protest roaring in the background. 

I do have to go in though. Watch a play. Get another theatre checked off my list. 

I guess. 

I mean, I could just go off and join XR. Throw this whole thing over with only three months left to go. I’d be well good at it. Always up for a protest me. And, may I remind you, I do, on occasion, recycle. 

They might find out about that time I once said “bollocks to the planet,” which I fear would stand against me. But I was having a really bad day. And the theatre was refusing to give me paper tickets, which is something that even an extinction rebellioner would understand-

Yeah. You’re right. Probably not. 

They would have done with paper tickets and programmes and freesheets and every else good in life, wouldn’t they. I am the antithesis of everything they stand for. 

That sucks. 

Oh well. 

Best go to the theatre then. 

“Bag?” says the bag checker on the door. 

I open it for him, wincing as we both peer in. 

I’ve just done a Superdrug haul. Toothpaste and hairclips and cough sweets float around on top of the more permenant detritus in my bag. 

He does not inspect any further. 

I can’t blame him really. 

“Box office?” I ask an usher who is standing in the middle of the overcrowded lobby, trying to bring order to the chaos. 

“Yup, that way,” she says, looking over her shoulder to indicate the well signposted desk just opposite the doors. 

I join the queue. 

At least, I think it’s the queue. There isn’t really room for a proper line, so we’re all just hanging about, trying not to tread on each other. 

A box officer is freed up, and I nip forward into place. 

But I’m so distracted by the mass of people around me, I total miss what they say to me. 

“Err, the surname’s… Smiles,” I say, hoping that’s the correct response for what they asked. “Sorry, I had to think about that one.” 

The box officer laughs politely. “Maxine?” 

“Yup,” I say, making a mental note not to make any more attempts at humour tonight. I do not want to be that customer. As if ushers don’t have enough to be getting on with. 

Paper ticket acquired, it’s time I got me a paper programme. 

If I’m killing the planet, I might as well support my own industry while doing it. 

And will you look at there, there’s a hatch right next to the box office marked programmes. You almost never see that anymore. The few hatched programme desks are usually bordered up. It feels like an artifact from another age. A gentler age. An age when we didn’t have to worry about our children fighting over the last cup of water. 

I bounce my way over happily and ask for one. 

The programme seller is holding a fan of all the options, but uses her free hand to point to the copies laid out on the desk. “Is it for Fisherman or Joe Egg?” she asks, pointing at each in turn.

“Joe Egg,” I tell her. Because that’s what I’m here to see. A Day in the Death of Joe Egg.  

“Lovely,” says the programme seller. “That’s four pounds fifty.” 

That’s not even unreasonable. “Do you take cards?” I ask. I’ve just been to the cash machine and I’m feeling a bit protective of my lovely new notes. 

“No,” she says with an apologetic shrug. “I can’t. But if you want to pay by card, then my colleagues at the bar…” 

I shake my head. “No. No. It’s okay. I have cash.” 

I can’t face dealing with the bar queue. Not when I’m so close to owning the papery goodness. 

That done, I fling myself into the bustle of the foyer to get a photo of the hatch, but just as I’m bringing up the camera app, the programme seller is closing the little window, sealing herself in. 

If I'd been just a few seconds later, I would have missed my chance to buy from the hatch. 

Well, no use dwelling over things that never happened.  

I slip back through the crowd and head towards the doors. 

You’ve got to admire the ticket checkers at the Trafalgar. One set of doors. Two theatres. It would break my brain in seconds. And they handle it all with cheerful smiles pinned on their faces. 

I show the nearest one my ticket. 

“Great!” he says, all chirpy happiness. “Would you like a programme?” He holds out his little fan of them. 

“I already have one!” I say a touch too proudly considering, well... it’s just a programme. 

Still, he seems impressed. “Oh! Well done,” he says. I grin happily. At least someone appreciates me for my programme buying habits. “Right, you’re up the stairs here,” he says, pointing the way. 

Up the stairs it is. 

At the top, a sign points me over to the door on the left. 

Inside, there’s an usher waiting. 

“Hello!” she calls over as I walk into the auditorium 

“Hi!” I show her my ticket. 

“Up the stairs and you’re in the back row.” 

More stairs. 

At least I’m getting some cardio in, I guess. 

But as I make it to the back row, a couple of women are leaving. And there’s someone standing in front of my seat. She’s dressed very smartly. Excessively smartly. 

“Where are you sitting,” she asks, just as I twig that she’s an usher. 

I tell her. 

“Would you like to sit further forward?” 

“Err,” I say, for a lack of proper words. I was not prepared for this. No one told me there would be a quiz. 

“I think you should,” she says encouragingly. 

“Okay?” 

“How about F1?” she says, drawing a line through one of the highlighted seats on the map she has in her hands. 

“Okay?” 

“Great!” 

“Oh, wait. Can you write it down for me. I have a terrible memory.” And terrible anxiety. I need a paper trail of this discussion before going anywhere.  

I offer her my ticket and she scrawls the new seat number on it. 

Perfect. 

Back down the stairs. 

The front of houser by the door glances over as I traipse past. “Got an upgrade!” I say to explain my reappearance. 

“Lovely!” 

I find my seat. Right on the end of the row, and much closer to the stage. 

I think I’ve lucked out, even if I do have to get up every thirty seconds to let someone into the row. At least half of those passing by step on my foot. Only one of them turns around to apologise. 

“It’s okay,” I tell her, still wincing with pain. 

It’s not, but you know, I appreciate the acknowledgement. 

To distract myself, I start taking pictures. First of the stage, and then twisting around in my seat to capture the auditorium in all it’s... can we call it glory? I don’t think so. Not that there is anything wrong with the main house at Trafalgar Studios. Studio 1 is just fine. The seats are fine. The sightlines are okay. The stage is reasonable. But that’s it. It’s modern. Ish. And clean. Ish. There’s nothing to irritate. But also, nothing to inspire. No fancy twirly bits. No chandelier. This is not a temple dedicated to the performing arts. It’s just a theatre. Plain and simple. Does what it says on the tin. Makes no promises, and doesn't break them.

As I twist back, I catch a front of houser’s eye. He’s holding up a no photos sign. I put my phone away, shamefaced. 

The play’s starting anyway. 

Toby Stephens comes out, in full teacher mode, telling us to be quiet, ordering eyes front, hands on our heads. 

A few people in the audience oblige. 

I am not one of them. 

I’m really not into this. School was bad enough the first time around. 

Still, I do like Toby Stephens. I feel like I have a story about Toby Stephens, but I can’t remember what it is, or even how I might have come by it, as I have never worked on any of his shows. So, I’m probably just imagining it. But even so, I feel like my story about Toby Stephens, if I do actually have one, is probably very charming and shows us both off in an excellent light. Which is nice. 

Not sure about this play though. Bit depressing. And I’m not really in the mood for depressing right now. Especially this brand of depressing. The hopeless, bad ending, kind. I can tell it’s going to have a bad ending already. There are too many jokes for it to end well. 

In the interval, half my row disappears down onto the stage to get themselves an ice cream. 

It is way too cold in here for that nonsense. I pull out my scarf and wrap it around me like a shawl, trying not to shiver. 

What is it with theatres still blasting their air conditioning? It’s October. It’s time to put the heating on, people. 

As the interval nears its end, my row starts to make its return. 

They each, in turn, stand on my foot. 

“Oh, I’m sorry,” says one. “I’ve done it again. Was it your’s again?” 

“It was. It’s okay,” I tell her. Again, it’s not okay. But like, at least she remembered it was me. 

“What was that?” cries out one of the leftovers as her friend returns. “I thought you’d disappeared!” 

The friend hands over an ice cream and slumps back down in her seat. “They all melted, and they went off to get some frozen ones!” 

The ones they’ve got now don’t look all that solid, but they make the best of it, polishing off the tiny tubs with their tiny spoons, just as the house lights dim for act two. 

I was right. 

It didn’t end well. 

There’s plenty of applause but we’re all curiously silent as we file out towards the exit. 

“I’m never going to a play ever again,” says someone standing near me. “I’m sticking to musicals after that.” 

As if to lift our mood, music is pumping out after us. 

A man stops the usher. “What’s the music?” he asks. 

She shakes her head. “No idea.” 

“Oh.” 

We go down the stairs, but the man still has his question. 

“What’s the music?” he asks the bloke behind the merch desk. 

The merch desk bloke doesn’t know either. 

But I’ve been checking my notifications, and my phone is claiming to know the answer. 

“It’s Dear Mr Fantasy by Traffic,” I read off my screen. 

“Dear Mr what?” says the man, rounding on me. 

“Fantasy.” 

“Traffic,” says his wife, helpfully. “We can just look up Traffic.” 

“We’ll look it up on Spotify,” he tells me. “It was good, wasn’t it?” 

I don’t know whether it’s the play or the song he’s referring to, but I quickly say ‘yes’ and then make my escape. 

Extinction Rebellion are still roaring. The flags still waving. The police still lined up across Whitehall. 

I bet they’re the ones that unplugged the ice cream freezer. 

Good for them. 

Missing: Dog

“You didn’t walk here, did you?” asks Allison, looking slightly scandalised as I rock up outside the Duchess Theatre.

I admit that I did, indeed, walk here. It’s not that far. I can do it in thirty-five minutes if I’m speedy. Not that I was speedy. I had a stop off to make along the way. A couple of stop-offs. And a full on detour.

Still, I’m here. And only a little bit damp around the edges.

“How are you not completely soaked?”

“I’m magic,” I tell her, truthfully. “Shall we go in?”

We join the queue to get our bags checked.

The bag checker isn’t paying attention.

He’s watching a woman getting run over with a security wand.

“Fuck’s sake!” she shouts, pushing her way back through the queue, shoving me out the way as she escapes.

“What was that?” asks Allison.

“She wanted to buy a ticket, but there aren’t any. I think. She went through security for nothing.”

“Oh dear!”

Allison makes it through the bag check and moves on to get wanded.

I hold my breath as the bag checker prods at the contents of my bag, hoping he doesn’t find the bag I have sitting, hidden, at the bottom.

He moves aside my squashed up cardigan, but if the presence of a plastic carrier bag from Chinatown Bakery is noted, he doesn’t say anything, waving me through.

At the next checkpoint I raise my arms out, just like I’d had to do over at the Palace. I can’t imagine The Play That Goes Wrong being as big a target as Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, but here we are, getting the same treatment.

“How are you?” asks the security officer as he runs the wand over my arms.

“I’m great!” I say, way too enthusiastically for a raining Tuesday evening.

“Very good! That’s what I like to hear.”

And with that, I’m waved inside.

Right. Better pick up those tickets.

I give my name at the box office and the box officer pulls them out from the ticket box. “Dress circle, bars, and toilets through there,” he says, pointing the way.

“Hang on,” I tell Allison. I just need to get a photo of the box office.

“For the blog!” she says, only slightly rolling her eyes.

But while I’m there, I spot a programme seller and soon I’m in a queue to buy one.

“I’ll have to give you a pile of fives,” says the programme seller, spotting the twenty-pound note in my hand.

“Fives are always welcome,” I tell him. And they are. There aren’t many cash machines around here that you can convince to give you one. Except… no. I’m not telling you that. I don’t want you all hogging my five-pound note supply.

“Here’s one,” he says, placing it in my palm. “And ten, and fifteen, and your programme.”

Lovely. “Lovely.”

Time to find Allison.

“Tickets please!” asks the ticket checker. I hand them over and he neatly tears the two of them apart, stacks them up, folds the tab on the end one way, then the other, then rips it off, before letting us past.

We’re in the bar.

It’s a very small bar.

We find an unoccupied corner and I get my phone out. “Sorry,” I say, as I open up a draft email and start making notes.

“That’s really impressive,” says Allison, very sweetly.

“Yeah, well, I do try not to misquote people. I really do,” I say as I transcribe all the interactions I’ve had in the past five minutes.

Auto-correct does it’s absolute worst to help me along, but whatever. I’ll be able to figure it all out in the morning.

“Right,” I say, finishing up. “Shall we go in?”

“Look!” says Allison, distracted by something over my shoulder. “They have mini champagne bottles!”

They do have mini champagne bottles. Over there. On the side of the bar. They are very cute.

“Don’t worry. I have something for you. A treat.”

When I make detours, it is always in the pursuit of food.

We head up the stairs, and emerge in the dress circle.

I show our tickets to the usher and she directs us back. All the back to the back.

I may be the sort of theatre companion to sneak in food for a friend, but I ain’t paying good money for tickets. If you go to the theatre with me, you’ll sit in the back, and you’ll like it.

“We appear to have lost a dog for tonight’s show,” calls out a man in theatre blacks. “Can you check under your seats?”

Allison squeals. She loves dogs.

We find our seats.

The two blokes sitting on the end of the row have a lot of bags. At least four rucksacks between the two of them.

I try to step over them, but I'm a shortie. I don't have long legs. Every embarrassing moment from the past nine months flashes before my eyes as I stumble over them. I don't want to die. Not here. I can't be a theatre ghost at The Play That Goes Wrong. They'd have me exorcised. There's no room for that nonsense in a farce.

But just before I tumble into the orchestra pit, I recover my footing.

Thank the theatre gods. I'm alive.

I need to sit down. And like, have some sugar. My nerves are shot.

"Do you want a taiyaki?" I ask Allison.

"What is that?"

So I explain. It's a fish. Made of pancake. With stuff inside.

"Do you like red bean?"

It always pays to ask. Don't want someone getting a nasty surprise.

She does. Thank goodness.

"That's insane," says Allison as she pulls the pancake fish out of its paper bag.

But we're soon tearing off their tails and munching happily as the search for the missing dog rages around us.

"Can you check under your seats?" calls out the man in theatre blacks.

"Everyone?" someone calls back.

"Everyone?! There's only about fifteen people in here!" He leaps up the stairs towards the back of the circle. "If you see a bulldog, do not approach him," he warns. "If you see him, let me know. Say 'yes, Trevor'."

"Yes, Trevor," repeats the fifteen people in the audience, very dutifully.

The house begins to fill up. Fifteen people turn to twenty. Then thirty. Until there are only polka dota of empty spaces around us.

An usher tries to guide an old couple to their seats.

"Where?" says the lady.

The usher points.

They're in our row.

We get up to let them pass.

The man goes first, inching his way down the row.

I yelp. Loudly. He's trodden right on my foot.

He leaps off, muttering and complaining and self-soothing without ever turning around to apologise.
I sit back down, wriggling my toes to bring them back to life.

These seats are dangerous.

And it's not just the seats.

Something is going on down there, on the stage.

They seem to be having trouble with the set.

The door on set won't stay closed. Trevor goes over to sort it out, but it's no good. It keeps opening.

Not only that, but the mantlepiece is broken all to shit.

A stage manager tries to fix it, but it's no good.

She disappears into the audience, mantlepiece in hand, returning a few seconds later with a bloke from the audience holding up the other end.

She directs him to hold the mantlepiece level while she gets to work securing it back over the fireplace.
And then she disappears.

The bloke looks around.

He's on stage. All by himself.

The audience giggles.

Bit mean. He was only trying to help out. This crew is having a bad day. And like, isn't that the point of theatre - a group of people coming together to make art happen? Sometimes, making art happen means being dragged on stage to hold up a bit of set with the stage manager disappears to find a hammer.

Trevor is back. "What are you doing on stage?" he asks.

"Just helping out," says the bloke with an audible shrug.

Right then. Might as well make use of him. He's pointed towards a broom and asked to sweep up. The handle falls away in his hand.

Oh dear. They're really not having a good day up there.

No sweeping then.

Perhaps he can carry over the tool box.

He tries to lift it, but it's too heavy.

With a sigh, the stage manager goes over and picks it up easily. Honestly, stage managers are superheroes. They really are.

Still, that's a kick in the teeth for male pride right there.

"Just talk amongst yourselves," they urge us. The duct tape has come out. There's nothing that can't be fixed with the help of a roll of duct tape. This mantlepiece is getting fixed no matter what.

But it's no good. The director comes out to introduce things, and apologise. He has a lot to apologise for. But, here's the thing. The play has got to start. Even if they don't have a mantlepiece. Or a dog. Or a Duran Duran CD.

We're off.

And bless them. They do their best. They really do. Although I suspect they could have done with a touch more rehearsal time.

They gamily press on though, working stoicly even though the audience keeps on laughing everytime things don't quite come off.

Although, someone should really tell Trevor that he's totally on display at his tech desk. And he really shouldn't be playing on his phone during the show.

We make it through to the interval.

I get out some more taiyaki. These ones filled with Nutella. I think we deserve it after all that.

Sugar levels now flying, I have a look through the programme. It's a nice programme. They have headshots for the backstage crew which is just lovely. Except... I flick back and forth over the biographies. There's someone missing.

Winston. The dog.

No wonder he ran off. I would too if the bloody stage manager, who, let us be real here, can't keep track of a functional hammer, gets one, and I, the owner of hearts and minds alike, get nothing. Not even a line credit. Absolutely not, I'd be out that door and running over to the Equity offices on St Martin's Lane as fast as my four paws could carry me.

"This theatre is weird," says Allison, staring at the ceiling. "It looks unfinished."

I look around. It is rather bare for a West End theatre. All plain walls and white paint. Not a single curly bit to be found.

"Look, there's a dome but no chandelier."

She's right. Above our heads is a very shallow looking dome. Painted gold as some vague concession to decoration, but with a strange texture that makes me think the plasterer wasn't very good at his job.

The second act starts and it looks like Winston isn't the only one to have had enough. The director, who is also the inspector, has had it with our nonsense. "You are a bad audience," he snaps, when some arse in the stalls decides they want to play panto and call things out. "And you know what makes a bad audience? Terrible people."

I am filled with shame. Here we are, watching a very tasteful murder mystery, and all we can do is giggle as the cast struggle gamely on through all the many... many... many mishaps.

An unusual amount of mishaps.

An almost unbelievable amount of mishaps.

I don't think I've spent so long set to wince-mode in my life.

It's almost like... nah. I'm just being silly. Things happen in plays. That's the nature of live performance. It's why we love it so much.

And like, I'm not sure how long this play has been running, but I presume it is still in previews. There's some details that need to be sorted out. A set that needs a little... extra work. Let's hope they have time to fix things up before the press get their claws in.

And print some programme slips to credit Winston the dog.

The director steps forward. I presume to give us an apology, but no, he's pitching the group's other plays.

"Is that a standing ovation or are you just getting up to leave?" he asks as someone in the stalls makes a break for it.

He recovers quickly though to tell us about the shows. The Comedy About a Bank Robbery over at the Criterion, which gets a cheer. And two new ones we probably haven't seen already. Expect, no, there's someone in the front row hasalready been. "Bet you haven't seen this next one because it isn't even on yet,’ says the director, before launching into his script about Magic Goes Wrong.

"Got the tickets!" comes the reply from the front row.

The director deflates. "I'll just go then."

I think we should all just go.

It's been an exhausting night.

And the cast and crew have a lot of work ahead of them.

On the way to the tube station, I keep an eye out for any dogs taking themselves for a walk. But no. The West End is surprisingly canine free on a Tuesday night.

I hope they find him soon.

The Blog post about a Theatre Trip

Two things in life are guaranteed.

No, not death and taxes. Keep up.

Theatre ghosts disprove the first and Jacob Rees-Mogg the second.

No, the two things are: the steps around the Eros statue in Piccadilly Circus will always be decorated with French teenagers. And no matter where you are in the West End, there will always be a b-boy battle raging nearby.

And so it is now. The French teenagers perch on the soaking wet steps, watching the hip hop dancers take it in turns to show off their moves. And I’m waiting outside the Criterion Theatre for my friend Allison to get here.

It was only a couple of days ago that I was telling you how the two of us met, back at the Albany theatre. Now look at us. Taking on the West End. One of us unwell and the other with soaking wet feet after stepping in a massive puddle this morning.

I’ll leave it to you to work out which is which.

“Shall we go in?” I say after sharing updates on the state of our immune systems and damp boots.

We get our bags checked and go inside.

“Collecting?” I ask to the usher in the foyer.

She waves us off towards the box office just inside the door.

I give my name to the lady behind the counter, trying very hard not to get distracted by the decor of this place.

I’ve raved about some impressively ornate West End theatres on this marathon, but I think we might have finally found a winner for the competition that I didn’t even know was raging inside my head until this moment.

There are mirrors. And tiles. And painted ceilings. And mouldings. And gilding. And…

“What’s the first name?” asks the box officer.

“Maxine,” I tell her.

She frowns, staring at the tickets in her hand.

“Do you have another name you might have booked under?”

Do I? I don’t think so. I’ve been Maxine for a long-arse time.

“Is there another name that TodayTix might have used? From a Facebook account or something?”

Now, here’s the thing. I can’t use my real name on Facebook. Because Facebook won’t let me. But it’s my surname it has a problem with. Not my first name. So that can’t be it.

I shrug. I don’t know what to tell her.

“Oh!” says the box officer, something clicking. “I see! They dropped the X. ‘Ma’. I was just thinking there can’t be another ‘Smiles’ in the house tonight.”

She laughs, the relief visible on her face.

I can’t blame her. It wouldn’t do at all to have multiple Smileses in the same building. At all. That’s a recipe for disaster right there.

Tickets acquired, I tell Allison to hang on while I tuck myself into a corner and try to take a photo of the foyer. It’s no good. There are too many people now and they are all getting in the way, cluttering up my image with their faces.

Honestly. This whole theatre-blogging malarkey is harder than it looks.

I give up, and we show our tickets to the usher on foyer duty.

“The upper circle is one floor down,” she tells are. “And the bar and toilets are two floors down.”

An underground theatre. Well, that’s fun.

Down the stairs we go, me pausing on every single step to get a photo of the fancy tiles on the walls.

Allison, bless her, waits patiently. As a semi-regular marathon guest, she’s been through all this before.

One floor down, we find a programme seller.

“Hang on,” I tell Allison. “I need to get a programme.”

“You need a programme.”

“I do need a programme!”

See? I told you this woman gets it.

“Can I get a programme?” I ask the programme seller.

I can. They’re four pounds.

“Do you have change for a tenner?”

He does.

“No, wait!” I say, with way too much passion. I think I might have frightened the poor guy. “I have a fiver.”

Allison coos appreciatively and the programme seller gives me an: “Amazing!”

Let it not be said that the entertainment I provide in real life matches the exact level you find on this blog.

“Do you want a drink?” I ask Allison. She properly deserves one.

We head down another level.

“Is it this way?” Allison asks. “No… Err…”

“What are you looking for?” asks an usher standing in the doorway to the Stalls.

“The Bar… oh I see it!”

A sign points us down a corridor and around the corner. And we end up in… well, this is not what I was expecting.

“This is not what I was expecting,” I say to Allison as we walk into a plain white room, with an equally plain bar tucked into the corner.

“No!” agrees Allison.

There’s no one here. It’s empty.

We keep on walking.

And then it appears. A long posing table runs down the centre of the room. Huge tiled panels that look like stained glass windows stretch up to the ceiling. And over there, the real deal glows, illuminated by backlights. And then uderneath them: the bar.

Found it.

"What are you getting?" asks Allison.

"Gin," I say. Because, I mean. Obviously.

"They have Sipsmith!" she says, looking at the menu on the wall.

They do have Sipsmith. They have fancy Sipsmith.

"Shall we try the Sloe Gin and the Lemon Drizzle?" I suggest.

So we do, finding a place on the long table and trying each of the drinks until we settle which one we want. Sloe for Allison. Drizzle for me.

"We should probably go up," I say.

We take our drinks back up the stairs towards the upper circle.

"Oh, wow," I say as we step into the auditorium. "Look at this place! It's so cute!"

"It's nice!" agrees Allison.

"I've never been here before."

"Nor have I."

"That's the problem with long-running shows. It doesn't give you a chance to see the theatre. What was in here before? Do you remember?"

Allison thinks. "The 39 Steps? Or… 49 Steps?" she suggests.

That sounds right. The thirty-nine version anyway. I didn’t know there was a sequel. "Did you see that one?"

She shakes her head.

Yeah, I missed it too.

Well, the Criterion must have found a niche doing farcical thrillers, because we are here to see The Comedy About A Bank Robbery. Which, something tells me, is a comedy about a bank robbery.

We're in the front row of the circle. "Do you want the aisle?" I ask Allison. Front rows aren't exactly known for their legroom, and Allison is a good deal taller than me.

But when we sit down, we find that it ain't all that bad. When Allison offers to stow my massive bag next to her, I don't feel the need to take her up on that. There's plenty of room.

I get out the programme.

"I just want to check something," I say. "There was something I saw downstairs and I didn't know if it was a joke ot not."

"What?"

"There was a cast change notice. 'The Role of Everyone Else will be played by Mr Tom Hopcroft.'"

I mean, this is the company that's been bringing us all the upside-down, misspelt, and generally messed up tube ads for their sister play: The Play That Goes Wrong, for half a decade. I can't see any of their signage now without thinking there must be a gag in there somewhere.

But no. There it is. "Everyone Else," I read in the cast list.

The show begins. We're in gaol.

Guards are with a prisoner in a cell. It's all very punny. I haven't heard this much cringey wordplay since the "Fork Handles" skit.

Oh dear.

Allison is never going to forgive me for dragging her out of her sickbed on a wet and miserable day to watch... whatever this is.

But soon we're breaking out, the dire jokes transform, and things are moving.

I'm giggling. I can't help myself.

I look over at Allison and, thank the theatre gods, she's laughing too.

I think we might be okay.

By the time we get to the interval, I have a great big grin plastered on my face.

The West End is serving me well this week. I'm getting a core workout from all this laughing. Who needs the gym when we've got theatre, eh?

"Where do you want to go?" asks Allison.

"Shall we just stand somewhere?" I say, not really wanting to make the treck down to the bar.

We go to the back of the circle, where there is plenty of room, and even a railing to lean against.

"What shall we do with these?" I ask, looking around for a bin to place my empty cup into. There's nothing. No ushers with plastic bags. They're probably waiting on the door.

I tuck it away under the railing. Out of the way.

It really is a cute little theatre. Small, but not cramped.

The walls are a soft salmon, matching the plush upholstery on the seats, and the thick curtains swagged over the boxes. A chandelier hangs from the dome in the ceiling. Everything is trimmed with gold. It’s like sitting inside a Barbara Cartland novel.

Anyway, it's time for act two, and we got a diamond to steal. And Mr Tom Hopcroft, in his covering-role of 'Everyone Else' has a hell of a lot of characters to play. Including, but not limited to, having a three-way fistfight with himself. And I honestly don't think I'm going to make it to the end of this show without peeing myself with laughter.

I'm not the only one in difficulty.

Down in the stalls a woman is screaming with joy. Every outburst of her's sending giggling echoes around the audience, like a ripple-effect of guffaws. A second wave of hilarity after every joke.

I don't think I've ever heard anyone enjoy a show quite so much.

It's frickin' adorable.

During the curtain call, she gets her whoop on, and the cast all peer into the stalls trying to see the person responsible.

Before we leave, we're reminded that Mischief Theatre is taking over the West End. Three theatres they're in at the moment. Three. No wonder they have a cartoon at the back of the programme charting their rise to theatre domination.

Their mothers must be so proud.

I wonder what that feels like.

Ghost Conversion

If ever there was a time for Leicester Square to just... not, you'd think it would be a Monday night at the arse end of summer. It's damp. It's dark. And yet, here we all are. Wandering around looking bleakly at the street performers and trying to convince ourselves that being robbed by primary coloured monsters in the M&M store counts as a good night out. Well, not me. Obviously. And not you, either. I'm talking about them. The tourists. But, you know, as our era of globalisation comes to a close, I'm feeling very inclusive. Because, after all, aren't we all travellers in this journey we call life? I mean, whatever. I'm outside the Prince of Wales theatre, and it looks like the TKTS desk has been doing a roaring Book of Mormon trade this morning because the HOUSE FULL sign is out front and the queue is stretching all the way down Oxendon Street. There's even a couple of people lining up for returns, which is sweet. Thankfully I don't have to join them. I've got my ticket all sorted.

I follow the queue down the pavement until I reach the end, where there is a black-coated front of houser on duty.

“Collecting?” she asks.

I confirm that I am indeed collecting.

“Lovely,” she says. “On the left.”

I join the line she’s pointing at, and begin the long shuffle forward. The queue over on the right peels away into a side door for people who already have their tickets on hand.

Me, I drudge my way around the corner and towards the front door.

Ushers monitor us from beneath the shadow of their huge black umbrellas.

“If you already have your tickets, head on inside!” they call. “If you’re collecting, join the end of this queue.”

“I need to collect my tickets…?” someone asks.

“Yup, join this queue on the left please.”

There’s a musician in front of me. At least, I’m guessing that’s the reason he’s holding a trumpet case.

The security guard on the door looks at it.

“What’s in there?” she asks as he holds it up.

He tells her.

“Nothing else?”

Nope. Nothing else.

She waves him past.

She’s clearly never been a fan of old mobster movies.

My turn. I open my bag for her and she pokes around, stirring up my scarf with her finger. I too get waved in.

“How many?” the man on the door asks me.

“One,” I tell him.

Yup. All on my lonesome on a Monday night.

“This way,” he says, moving the barrier to let me through.

Well now… I could get used to this. Preferential treatment for the loners. I like it.

Now in the foyer, I go over to the counter and find a free box officer. “Smiles?” I tell him. “S. M. I-“

“What was that?”

It is rather loud in here with three box officers all trying to get tickets out at the same time.

“Smiles?” I try again. “S. M. I. L. E. S.”

He nods. He’s got it this time.

A short riffle through the ticket box later and he’s got it.

I don’t even have time to tear off the receipt bit before I need to hand it over to the ticket checker. I’ll give the Prince of Wales this, they see a full house and they throw the entire staff rota at it. I haven’t managed a single step yet without being within bleeting distance of a front of houser.

“You’re going through door D for Delta,” says the ticket checker, unfolding the ream and looking it over. “All the way upstairs.”

That’s good. I need the exercise.

I follow his directions, aiming myself for the staircase.

The walls are covered with shiny silver paper. The carpet is burnt umber.

One floor up and I’m in a bar. Is it a bar? No. There’s no one selling drinks.

Just tables and chairs and banquettes. Sitting for the sake of sitting. With no one trying to get money out of you.

Now this is luxury.

I consider taking one of the seats next to the window. It looks like there’s a pretty impressive view down Coventry Street. But my investigation must continue.

I keep climbing.

And find a programme seller.

That’s good. I was worried I'd walk out of here with cash still in my wallet.

“Do you have change for a tenner?” I ask her.

“I do!” She sounds genuinely excited about this. “Let’s do a swap,” she says as I offer her my note.

I take the fiver and fifty pee from her hands. They wobble dangerously on my palm as I grapple with the ten-pound note.

“Ooo!” she says as I nearly lose the coin to the umber carpet.

“Don’t worry. I got it,” I tell her, recovering, and we manage to finish the exchange without loss of change.

I follow the signs for door D, up past more metallic wallpaper, through another seating area, past old show posters from the thirties, and here I am. Right at the top.

I emerge into the auditorium at the back of the circle.

It’s a dramatic space, with a huge stage and the seating drawn out in long lines. No horseshoe shaping or slip action going on here. Apart from a few boxes we are all going to be sitting front on.

“Row K?” says the usher on the door as he looks at my ticket. “Just over here,” he says, leading me to my row and waving me into it.

The seats are nice. Comfy. No armrests though, as I soon realise when the young man sitting next to me sticks his elbow right into my ribs.

I fear I may have similar troubles on the other side as the girl sat there wrestles her way out of a glossy leather jacket. But once her escape has been secured, and the jacket carefully arranged over her lap, her elbows are tucked in closely, only moving when a box of Maltesers is passed over from a friend. Which I’m sure we can forgive. I would never deny someone a Malteser.

The lights dim, and the tiny statuette topping the extravagantly decorated proscenium arch twists and turns, playing a trumpet.

That’s cool.

The rest of the audience clearly thinks so too. Even after all these years, Book of Mormon still manages to elicit a “Wooo!” of excitement as it kicks off.

Across the way, down by the boxes, I spot someone dressed in a smart white shirt and black tie. He may even have been wearing a name badge.

Is that an elder?

As the curtain rises, and the Latter Day Saints get their hellos on, I keep an eye on him.

If the Price of Wales theatre is getting their ushers dressed to theme then I am so here for it.

But when the latecomers are led in, I can see full well that the ushers are not wearing white shirts and black ties. They are wearing striped shirts and no ties. More prison chain-gang then clean-cut missionaries.

When I look back, the white shirt is gone.

Perhaps he was my first sighting of a theatre ghost.

A Mormon theatre ghost.

I sure hope so. You never hear about Mormon ghosts. It sure feels like the Catholics have a monopoly on the supernatural, and frankly, it’s 2019 and we all need to move on and update the ectoplasm.

I don’t get much of a chance to think about this, because Book of Mormon is packed full of absolute bangers and I can’t concentrate on anything as measly as potential theatre ghosts. It’d take a confirmed sighting to get me out of this seat.

No surprises there though. The Latter Day Saints know how to party. Let me tell you, you haven't lived until you've been to a totally sober ceilidh in the back room of a temple with a bunch of eighteen-year-old Mormons. Seriously. It's quite the experience.

And before you get all weirded out, I was also eighteen at the time. And I was totally in love with the sweetest Mormon boy ever. He was... so tall. And had all these stories about his mission in Africa. None of them involved frogs though. I just want to clarify that.

Funnily enough, it didn't go anywhere. He's married now. Lives in Utah.

Anyway, where was I? 

Shit. Yes. The Prince of Wales theatre.

It's the interval now.

We mostly stay in our seats. Presumably, all dreaming about the Mormon boys we used to know.

The elbowy dude next to me goes to get an icecream and makes full use of his angles when he returns to eat it.

Feeling a bit bruised, both emotionally and in the more literal sense, we make it to act two.

This show opened eight years ago. Which makes me feel hella old because I got myself into the final dress rehearsal for this production. Anyway, it's interesting to see how long-running shows keep themselves relevant. There's usually a dance move lifted straight from a TikTok video so everyone can pretend they're down with the kids, and yup - there it is. Dabbing. Literally the only place you see that move anymore is in West End theatres. Kinda adorable.

The No Deal Brexit joke gets a roar of laughter, but whether it's from approval or sheer terror, I can't tell.

A fullsome round of applause later, it's time to leave.

"No Deal Brexit!" says someone to his friend as we make our way back down the silver stairs. "He called her No Deal Brexit? Did you catch that?"

"He called her lots of silly things.”

"Yeah, but No Deal Brexit!"

"That was funny."

"It was funny."

It was funny.

And now I get to go home and sup on some sweet sweet caffeine, sure in the knowledge that no Scary Mormon Hell dreams await me tonight.

Wish: Granted

Thank the theatre gods for BIG The Musical. 

I was beginning to get a bit worried here. 

The Dominion Theatre has been dark for a very long time. Since the first week of January. I’d meant to get myself to Bat out of Hell before it closed, but as the final performances loomed the prices shot up and there was no way I was paying 80 quid to see… whatever that musical was.  

The months rolled on. 

I’d walk past the shuttered venue, peering into the glooming looking foyer every time I walked down Tottenham Court Road, until I began to regret my cheapness. 

Eighty pounds wasn’t that bad. Not when the fate of an entire marathon rested on it. 

Prince of Egypt announced it wood be moving in. But not until 2020. 

I don’t mind admitting that I was getting a bit panicky. 

But then, blessed relief. BIG The Musical was coming to London for a limited season. I held out. Not buying a ticket. Cheapness gnawing at my heart once again. 

I needn’t have worried. TodayTix had my back. A 24-hour ticket offer. Fifteen quid to sit in the stalls. Not bad at all. 

So, yes, thank the theatre gods for BIG The Musical. But all hail TodayTix and their ticket offers. 

This is my first visit to the Dominion. Not only did I miss Batty, I also missed every other previous show. And by missed, I mean: actively avoided.  

So, it’ll be nice to get a good look at the place. 

As I approach the entrance, a bag checker mimes opening a bag and I take the hint. He doesn’t find anything of interest inside, so I’m allowed through. 

The foyer of the Dominion is huge. Double height. With a staircase either side leading over to a balcony overlooking the massive space below. It’s all red and cream and brass and really looks like that hotel in American Horror Story. I look up, fully expecting to see Lady Gaga selecting her victims from the cattle below. 

No such luck. 

In the centre of the lobby there are two podiums staffed by programme sellers. Or perhaps the more accurate description would be lecterns, so tall there’s a built in box at the back of the for the programme sellers to stand on. 

I still need to get my tickets, so I pass them and follow the sign to the box office. 

“Collecting?” asks a man in a suit who seems to be in charge of the queue. 

I tell him I am. 

“There’s a window free just past those people there,” he says, pointing the way, past the main box office, and into a tiny dark corridor with box office windows all down one wall. I’m not sure on the capacity of this place, but it’s built for scale, that’s for sure. 

I find the next free window, and give the box officer behind it my surname. 

“Do you have a confirmation email?” he asks. 

I mean, I do. But it’s from TodayTix, so there ain’t no reference numbers or anything. I bring it up all the same and hold it up to the glass for him to see. 

He squints at it. 

I wonder if I’m showing him the right bit. I have a look and scroll down to see if there’s more pertinent information going at the bottom of the email. 

“No, that’s fine,” he says. “I’ve got it.” 

And off he disappears to recover my ticket. 

Ticket in hand, it’s time to get me a programme. 

I go back to the lecterns. 

And stop. 

Because I have just spotted the price. 

Ten pounds. 

Ten actual British pounds. 

I know I shouldn’t be surprised by now. I’ve been lobbed with higher bills before. But still. Ten pounds. That’s a lot of money for a programme. 

“Do you take cards?” I ask one of the programme sellers, because of course your girl has not got a tenner on her. 

“Yes, but over at the other desk,” she says, pointing over to the other lectern. 

Okay then. 

I go over to the other side and get myself a programme, paying ten (ten!) pounds for it. 

There isn’t much else of interest going on out here, so I head back, down the steps, towards the stalls. 

There’s a merch shop down here. An actual, proper, shop. Not a desk tucked away in some corner. It’s full of BIG-branded stuff. T-shirts and sweatshirts and teddy bears and lanyards and mugs that might rival Sports Direct in their proportions. But I don’t pay attention to any of that, because I’ve just spotted something far more interesting. Over there. On the far side. It’s a Zoltar machine. And by the looks of it, it’s not just there for decoration.  

I go over. The sign stuck on the front says it’s two pounds for a go. Well, I just spent a tenner on a programme, I’m not about to wimp out on two quid on this. 

I get out my purse, find the coins, and then stare at the machine. Not sure how I’m meant to do this. I put them on the little slot and try to shove it in, but the slot ain’t having it. 

“Oh my god, someone’s having a go!” a young man standing nearby exclaims. 

“Trying to!” I exclaim right back. 

A woman comes over to have a look. “Here, I think they go in those slots,” she says. 

She’s right. They do go in those slots. 

A second later, Zoltar starts waving his hand and chattering on about it being better not to reveal too much and other mystic sayings. The pair of us stand there, watching him, until a full minute or so later, a fortune pops out. 

I have a look. 

Apparently, my lucky month is August, which is just great now that it’s September. Got a long way to go before my luck comes in. Hopefully I can hold out until then. 

Shoving the fortune into my pocket, I make for the entrance to the auditorium. 

“XX?” says the ticket checker. “Down this aisle and you’re on the left.” 

Turns out, row XX is really far back. The Dominion is one hell of a big theatre. I almost consider using those binoculars stuck to the bottom of the seat in order to see the stage. 

The rake isn’t great, with nothing but the most gentle slope happening between the rows, but the seats are at least offset, and I find myself with a great little view in between the heads of the people in front. 

My neighbour isn’t quite so content. 

Leaving her partner behind, she chivvies me out of the way to go and sit in one of the empty seats further into the row. 

A plan soon thwarted by the row in front starting to fill up. 

She moves further in. 

But the people sitting in front have the same idea, and a game of musical chairs starts up between them, as they all try and get an unobstructed view. 

The house lights buzz and flicker dramatically, and then go out. 

The show begins. 

These people clearly spent a lot of money here. The set is huge, with screens and multi-storey buildings and set changes between every song. 

A big set for a big theatre. Pity there isn’t the audience to match. 

Even with the £15 offer, it’s looking a bit thin back here. And judging from the very localised applause patterns, I’d say a good chunk sitting over on the far side work for the show. 

This is my cue to say something like: no matter, I’m having a good time. But the truth is: I’m not. I do like the film. It’s a great story. What it doesn’t need though, is songs. And they aren’t even very good songs. Not a banger in the mix. And seemingly written with the premise that everyone on stage needs to have a go. 

When that scene comes around, the one with the piano, the one that has made it into the show artwork, it is done via projection. And the notes that emerge have no relation to the movements of the performers. The big whoop from the contingent on the far side is taken up by the rest of the audience, but the enthusiasm isn’t there. It’s hard to get excited about a faked-up set piece. Half the joy of live theatre is the potential to go wrong. Knowing that the keys would light up, and the notes play, even if both key-hoppers sat down and shared a sandwich half-way through, doesn’t do much to get the old heart racing. 

Interval time. 

I get out my programme to see what ten pounds has bought me. 

Not a lot. 

I mean, sure, it’s massive. But content wise, there’s nothing there. Biogs. Production shots. That's it. Not even an article to read. 

For that price, I’d at least expect some fan service, like what Only Fools and Horses managed to do in there’s. But the closest this one has is asking the cast what their Zoltar wish would be. Not particularly inciteful, and honestly, best suited to a blog post. 

As people return from the interval, there’s a lot of seat hopping as everyone tries to upgrade themselves. 

I spot the separated couple six or seven rows ahead of me, now reunited. 

And I find myself in the happy position of having no one sitting in front of me.  

Sadly, it doesn’t do much for the show. 

But plod on we do, and the end eventually rolls around. 

During the curtain call, I lone woman stands. She waves at the cast. I think she must know one of them. 

But as we are launched into a truly unnecessary finale, more people stagger to their feet. Some to leave, others to ovate. 

I hold out until the cast members wave us goodbye, disappearing behind the rotating set. But as the band strikes up once more, I cannot stick it any longer. And make my escape. 

S.O.S.

I seem to be spending a lot of time in the West End at the moment. Mostly because all the super-fringey theatres haven’t got anything happening over the summer months, but also because there just aren’t enough tourists around to fill up all those long-running shows and there are offers going all over the place. 

As I make my way down the Strand, I spot a large queue outside Waitress, aiming itself at a tiny podium with the TodayTix logo on it. Now, I love me a bargain on TodayTix, I really do. This blog is testament to that. But when a theatre needs a whole queue just to accommodate buyers coming through a single, solitary, app, you do have to wonder if they overshot on the pricing. 

Oh well. No time to worry about that. 

I’m back in the Aldwych tonight, which I’ve come to think of the road that houses all the shows that I would never, ever, visit outside of the marathon.  

We’ve already had the Tina: The Tina Turner Musical chat. 

Now it’s the turn of its neighbour, the Novello. 

Yup, I’m off to Mamma Mia. 

May the theatre gods preserve us all. 

“Yeah, sorry, there’s loads of people taking photos of some theatre,” says a young woman, striding past on her mobile. 

I lower my phone. 

Yeah, she got me. 

But I’m not the only one. 

I seem to have found myself within a small gathering of amateur photographers, all aiming our phone cameras upwards at the Novello façade. 

It’s a nice façade. Paned glass and lots of swaged foliage carved into the stonework. The window-frames are lit up with a pale-blue glow that would be more fit for Frozen when that opens next year. It all looks very glamorous, somewhat at odds with the show that lives inside. 

“Here, stand here,” orders a woman to her two daughters. “Let me get a picture of you to post on Facebook.” The pair of them make matching expressions of disgust. “Don’t worry,” she assures them, “I’ll edit it first.” 

This appeases them enough to stand and pose in the small island in the middle of Catherine Street, as lines of black cabs rattle by on either side. 

I dart in between them, past the sisters who are still in model-mode, and over to the opposite pavement. 

There’s a large queue stretching out of the curved doors and working it’s way back down the pavement, sealed off by a Mamma Mia branded barrier. 

I join the end of the line. 

It moves fast enough. There’s two bag checkers and they are peering at our stuff as if we were all on the conveyor belt of The Price is Right, and coming up behind us is the cuddly toy. 

Inside the foyer is a mass of movement as people try to figure out where they’re going. 

There’s the merch desk on one side. A concessions stand on the other. And something else a bit further back, which I can’t quite make out but has one hell of a queue. 

“Box office?” I ask the young woman on the door as I gaze in horror at this heaving crowd. 

“Are you buying or collecting?” 

“Collecting.” 

“Just here,” she says, pointing to the big queue at the back. I inch myself through. There seems to be two counters, set behind windows in the wall. My favourite kind of West End box office, but all these people are setting off my anxiety, and I can’t tell where the queue even ends. It try to follow it back but somewhere along the way it appears to have looped back on itself. 

“Who’s waiting?” comes a voice from the middle of the crowd. It’s a front of houser, and she’s doing her best to impose some form of crowd control, but there’s nowhere for them to go. 

No one answers her. They’re all too busy shoving in opposite directions. 

I squeeze myself towards her. 

“Just here,” she says, pointing to one of the windows. And just like that, I’m giving my name to the box officer, and skipping the entire line. 

“Maxine?” says the box officer, checking the ticket. “That’s one in the balcony.” 

It’s a nice ticket. Got the show artwork on it and everything, which is something I appreciate. Love a bespoke ticket. 

That done, I double back for the merch desk and ask for a programme. 

“Would you like a small one for 4.50?” she asks, indicating the display on the counter. “Or both for ten pounds.” 

Did I hear that right? A small one and a big one for ten pounds? I’ve always disapproved of this trend of selling souvenir brochures on top of the programmes. Yes, you can justify them as appealing to different audiences – those that want to read about the cast, and those that want big shiny production photos. But let’s be real here. Theatres want to empty your wallet, and will use any trick they’ve got to pour your coins into their till. But both for a tenner sounds like a fucking good deal. Those brochures can go for fifteen quid on their own. 

Not that I want a brochure. I’m an old school programme gurl. I like my cast list, and my creative biographies. I like articles. And words. And yes, the odd pretty picture. But not enough to spend an extra fiver and change. 

I settle for a small one. 

That done, it’s time to go upstairs. 

A not unfancy staircase, which makes a change from the usual route to the cheap seats. There’s carpet. And portraits. And even a bar. 

A nice bar! 

It’s large. With seating, and windows overlooking both the Aldwych and Catherine Street. The very windows I had admired from down on the pavement. 

I’m a bit early so I plonk myself down at a window seat, a not unpleasant place to sit after the crush downstairs. 

Two bar staffers serve the few audience members who have made it up here, taking care to explain everything with gentleness and patience to the touristy clientele. 

“The programme is this one,” says one, pulling a copy of the shelf to show woman at the bar. “We don’t have the brochure here, but if you’d like it I can give you a receipt and they have the brochures inside. So they can give you one. The small one has the cast. The brochure is the bigger one, and has the pictures in it.” 

“Yes, pictures…” 

“You’ll want the brochure then.” 

“Okay...” 

“Separately the big one is eight, but you can get them together for ten pounds.” 

“And I have to go inside?” 

“You can buy them both here. I’ll give you a receipt and you can just show it to them, and they’ll give you a brochure.” 

I use the opportunity to look at my own programme. 

There’s a cast change slip already placed inside. Looks like we’ve got a few people out tonight, not that it makes much difference to me. I couldn’t tell you who anyone was in this show. 

Apart from the biogs, and an interview with Judy Craymer (who apparently is the creator, but isn’t credited anywhere else in this thing), it’s pretty much the same programme I’ve bought at every Delfont Mackintosh theatre this year. I put it away in my bag and look around. 

There’s a rather handsome wallpaper lining the walls, with golden Ws resting amongst equally golden laurel leaves. 

That’s strange. I wonder if they had a couple of rolls left over from the Wyndham’s refurb… 

I should probably go to my seat. 

Up some more stairs, and there’s a ticket checker up here. 

“Lovely,” he says, far too enthusiastically when he notices that I’ve already torn away the receipt and address portions of the ream. Honestly, theatre-goers really need to start doing this. Save your ticket checker some papercuts. He folds over the stub and tears that off. “Straight up the stairs here,” he says, nodding towards the closed door behind his shoulder.  

And up I go. 

There’s another ticket checker on the door to the auditorium. This one looks rather flustered. She’s talking to an equally flustered-looking audience member. 

“You’ll need to go to the box office and speak to them,” says the ticket checker.  

“Downstairs?” 

“Yup, you’ll need to go all the way downstairs, and make your way up again before the start of the show…” 

“But should I go down...?” she asks, sounding a wee bit stressed. 

“Well, you’ll need to speak to them…” 

“Right.” And off the audience member goes. 

I offer the ticket checker my torn ticket and a sympathetic smile. 

“Front row,” she says, waving me in. 

As I make my way down the steep steps, I spot the stressed audience member. “Let’s go,” she says, touching her partner’s shoulder. 

“Are you sure?” he asks. 

“You need to be able to sit!” she insists. 

That’s true. You do need to be able to sit. 

Limited legroom has taken another victim tonight. 

That’s not so much of a problem for me. Yes, my knees are bashing against the boards in the front row, but they’ve suffered through worse over the past eight months. I’ll survive. 

I distract myself by looking around. 

It’s a shame I’ve never been in here before. It’s a nice auditorium. Very Edwardian in its excess. All marble and cherubs and even gargoyle faces, leering at us from their nests.

There’s even a chandelier that looks like a dropped trifle. It’s magnificently ugly.

And Ws. Again. Large ones. Set in golden wreaths. 

That’s strange. 

I get out my phone and search for the Novello’s Wikipedia page. 

Turns out this place used to be the Waldorf Theatre, which explains it, I guess. Thing is, it hasn’t been the Waldorf for over a century, and only had that name for four years anyway. You’d think they’d have updated the wallpaper already. 

The Novello name is because old Ivo had a flat here back in the day. A legacy that Cameron Mackintosh seems keen to continue as he’s having a penthouse set up somewhere in here. I do like the idea of living in a theatre. Not sure I’d pick this one though. While I appreciate a good ABBA singalong as much as the next person (as long as I’m not actually expected to singalong), I’m not sure I could cope with Supertrooper blasting out every night while I’m trying to eat my dinner.  

Over the tannoy, there’s a proper old Big Bong. “Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Please take your seats. This evening’s performance will begin in five minutes. 

“... three minutes. 

“... two minutes.” 

The house lights dim. There’s an announcement. Turn off your phones and whatnot. Plus a warning for those with a “nervous disposition,” that this show contains “platforms and white lyrca.” 

With that terrifying thought, we begin. 

Not that most of the audience seems to have noticed. 

Chats continue. 

Phones stay out. 

I don’t think I’ve ever been in an audience which gives less of a shit as to what is going on onstage. 

My neighbour jerks in her seat, getting out her phone, the need to check her messages too great to sit still. 

She leans over to her friend and whispers something. 

The friend grabs her bag and retrieves something. A tiny squeeze bottle. She hands it to my neighbour. 

My neighbour pours the contents into her hand. Finds her phone again. Switches it to selfie mode and then... proceeds to reinsert her contact, picking and proding at her eye, the phone on her lap.

I have never seen the like in a theatre, and in truth, I’m a little impressed. 

Exhausted by these antics, she spends the interval slumped down in her seat, curled up under her coat. 

Again, I’m impressed. 

These seats are narrow and highbacked, extending well above our heads. 

I now have a new appreciation for the Queen. Turns out thrones aren’t all that comfy. 

I stay where I am. I’m not all that convinced that on leaving this row, I’ll ever be able to get back in. 

The five-minute warning goes. Then three. Then two. Then one. 

We’re back. 

My neighbour hauls herself out of her slumber, but within a couple of songs her head is sinking gently down, nodding out of time with the music. By the wedding, we’re in real danger of her falling asleep on my shoulder. 

I will the cast to sing in double time and rap this story up. 

We make it. My shoulder free of sleep-induced slobber. Thank the theatre gods. 

The keyboard players in the pit wave at the cast, and the cast, in turn, reach down to shake the keyboard players' hands.

As we traipse down the stairs, I can hear Mamma Mia blaring, and I wonder if I’m missing an encore, but no. It’s coming from outside. A rickshaw, parked on the pavement, and with his soundsystem full blast.  

That’s one way to do marketing, I suppose. 

I really hope Mr Mackintosh likes listening to ABBA in bed... 

Back to Hogwarts

I don't want to get your hopes up, but I think there's a strong possibility that Autumn is here. The terrible reign of that blazing ball in the sky is over. No longer will I have to suffer the indignity of the t-shirt. I can wear real clothes now. Nice clothes. I don't mind telling you that I just spent the best part of an hour trying things on. Because tonight, Matthew, I am going to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and I need to be the Gothiest Goth that ever Gothed, or die in the attempt.

And I think I've found the one.

It has a high lace collar. It has long sheer sleeves. It has cinched cuffs. It's perfect.

My eyeliner is sharp.

My boots stompy.

I am peak Goth.

I mean, personal peak. I'm not ready for an undercut or a lip piercing quite yet.

I put my 49er on top of the whole thing, and, not gonna lie, I look frickin' adorable.

As I walk to the tube station, a little girl hangs out of her window. "Hello. Hello. Hello," she shouts. "Hello, fashion lady!"

Which has to be, by far, the nicest thing shouted at me from a window.

No time to dawdle though. The Palace Theatre peeps are strict as hell.

I got, not one, but two emails, that stated, in no uncertain terms, that I should pick up my ticket, at the latest, one hour before the show starts. Now, I'm sure you'll agree with me, that this is completely ridiculous. There is no theatre in the city, not even the London Palladium, that is so chaotic that it requires a 6.30pm pick up for a 7.30pm curtain.

So, I decide to ignore the advice.

And turn up at 6pm.

The box office at the Palace is round the side of the building, on Shaftesbury Avenue. It has it's own separate entrance, which leads into a good-sized room, with a row of counters on the far side, tucked behind glass. It's almost like stepping into a bank.

There is exactly no queue.

The lady at the nearest counter looks up and gives me a great big smile, so I go over to her.

"Hi! The surname's Smiles?" I tell her.

"Lovely," she says, getting up from her seat. "I'll need a reference number and ID too."

"Okay," I say, grabbing my purse in readiness.

She's on her way back, tickets in hand. She looks at them. "Actually, it's just ID, because you won the lottery."

Yeah, I did! For the first time ever, I managed to win of those TodayTix ticket lotteries. No luck with The Lehman Trilogy. Didn't anywhere with Present Laughter. Had to get up at 3am to see Fleabag after failing again and again with that one. I was beginning to think that TodayTix didn't like me. Which, considering how much money I've been throwing at them this year, is a wee bit rude.

But they came through for this one. All hail Harry Potter and the Friday Forty.

"Oo, I like your purse," says the box office lady as I show her my ID. "Lovely," she says checking it. "Doors open at 6.30. Enjoy!"

And with that, I'm back out on Shaftesbury Avenue.

It's about ten past six.

I should probably go and do something.

I walk around, having a look at all the second-hand bookshops on Charing Cross Road. More than a few of them have a dedicated Harry Potter section crammed at the front of their window displays. This whole area seems to be running on a Harry Potter based economy. There's the newly opened House of Spells shop, with doormen in jacquard coats that scared me so much I didn't want to go in, and the House of MinaLima on Greek Street, which I'm sure was supposed to be a popup shop, but has grown some serious roots. In the Foyles playtext section, there are enough copies of Cursed Child on display to stage your own mini-production.

I circle back through Soho to the theatre.

There's a big sign out front. Someone is proposing to their girlfriend at the show. That's nice. I mean... it's utterly abhorrent. I don't understand public proposals, at all. But if they're into that, good for them. I wish them a long and happy life together.

But more importantly, there's now a queue, snaking it's way down Romilly Street and around Greek Street. I should probably join it.

The queue moves quickly.

Signs tell us to have our bags open and to definitely not, no don't even think about, bringing in food.

Next to it, a homeless man sits. He has his own sign. He's trying to sell an illustrated copy of the first Potter book. "Any real offer is cool."

The Harry Potter economy is hitting hard.

We round the corner. The front of the theatre is cordoned off with crowd control barriers. One by one we are waved in, directed to tables of bag checkers.

"Any food or drinks?" asks mine as I dump my bag on the table and open it for her.

That gives me pause. I mean... I think we all know that these checks aren't for security anymore. They're protecting their bar sales, not our bodies. But I never thought I'd get an actual admission on the line. This marathon is full of surprises.

"No," I say, knowing full well I have a slightly squished protein bar in the side pocket.

"Any sharps?" she asks, digging her hand right in.

"No." I'm not sure my cutting wit quite counts.

"And food or sharps?"

"No."

"No?"

"No."

"Okay," she says, and waves me on.

Next up there's a line of black-suited security guards. They have body scanners.

Blimey. That's a first.

"Arms up," says one, putting out his arms in a cross to demonstrate.

I follow his lead, lifting up my arms, my bag still dangling heavily from one hand.

He runs the scanner over me. It must have beeped or flashed, because, without warning, his hand is in my jacket pocket.

"Oh," he says, after finding nothing in there except the reminiscence of an old tissue.

He let's me pass.

Feeling ever so slightly violated, I finish the security part of the entrance examination.

It's time to get me through the doors.

The first one has a Hufflepuff checking tickets. I can tell she's a Hufflepuff because she's got the house colours on her lanyard. All the front of house staff do at the Palace. Have house coloured lanyards I mean. On my first trip here, way back when the show was still in previews (and yes, I am showing off, thanks for asking) I got chatting to the ushers and was informed that they are very serious about the whole house business here. The staff all need to get sorted on the Pottermore website, and there's no switching just because yellow doesn't suit your complexion.

I head to the next door. There's not much of a queue here, but the ticket checker is a Gryffindor and I ain't dealing with that bullshit today.

At the third door there's no queue. But there is a Slytherin ticket checker.

Or perhaps that should be: at the third door, there's no queue, because there is a Slytherin ticket checker.

I immediately rush over and show her my ticket.

"On the far side, down the stairs," she instructs as she tears my ticket. "There are bars and toilets on every level."

"Thanks!" I say, way too excited. I hold back the urge to shout "Go Slytherin!" as I bounce through the door and into the foyer.

The merch desk is right oppsite the doors, selling all the house colour stuff. I already have a fair bit of Slytherin gear and those scarves are expensive, so I decide not to test my overdraft any further. Besides, they save all the best merch for Part 2.

Instead, I go straight to the programme desk.

There's a sign over the top stating that programmes are "Just £5." Which, you know, isn't bad. Cheaper than a Slytherin house scarf anywway.

One of the programme sellers spots me. "Are you waiting?" he asks.

He's wearing a Slytherin lanyard. I don't know why it is that the 'puffs have the reputation for being loyal. In my experience, it's the Slytherin's who are always looking out for one another.

"Can I get a programme?" I ask him.

"Of course!" See? He's got my back.

I hand him a ten.

"Perfect!" he says, and I keep a close eye on him as he gets my change. Let's be real... I would trust a Slytherin with my life, but not my fivers.

Still, I wonder if I can go the entire evening only interacting with Slytherins. That might be a fun challenge. I mean, yes, it does sound a bit, well, Voldemorty, but this is the third time I've seen this show. I need to inject a little bit of danger into this trip.

Down the stairs, there are more programme sellers down here. And a concessions desk. You'd think they'd be selling stuff straight off the Hogwart's Express trolley, but no, it's the same boring old trash you'd find at any theatre. I move on.

Down some more steps, and into the bar. An Aladin's cave of gold paint, pillars, and mirrors, all held together my a menagerie of naked-lady mouldings.

It's still really early, so I find an empty corner and start people watching.

There aren't too many people dressed up down here. The queue was full of young‘uns wearing house t-shirts, but they don't seem to have made it down to the stalls.

I spot two ladies wearing all access passes round their necks. Not sure what those are or what they have access to, but I sure as hell wouldn't be wasting them on the stalls bar if I had them. I'd be off backstage somewhere, stealing me a sorting hat.

The bar begins to fill, and my quiet corner is under threat of attack from all sides.

I look at my ticket. I'm to use door 2 to get into the auditorium, and look, just on the other side of my little enclave is a sign pointing the way to door 2.

I follow it.

After the gilded glory of the bar, I'm whisked into a very plain corridor. The only decoration a pair of shelves, with numbered plaques, which I can only assume will be holding interval drinks in few hours' time.

I keep on going. Up some stairs, and down to the end of the hallway.

There's a curtain, and through it, the theatre.

It's nice. It's well named. Very... palacial.

I make my way down the side of the stalls towards the front row. Oh yeah, ya gurl has got herself a seat in row AA tonight.

I'm very excited about it.

I mean, the stage is high so I'm going to miss a hell of a lot of stuff happening at the back, but it's okay. I've seen this twice before. Once from mid-stalls, and the second time from somewhere in the balcony. I know what's going on. I'm just going to appreciate being able to see all the stage-trickery up close, and yup, from my spot at the end of the row, it looks like I'll be able to get a little glimpse into the wings.

This is going to be mega.

I take off my jacket and settle in.

Train station sound effects are being piped in, and it's amazing how soothing they can be without the added ambience of thousands of commuters all collectively hating each other.

Trunks and suitcases litter the stage, so you just know there's magic happening, becuase they wouldn't last five minutes unattended in the muggle world without someone calling the bomb squad.

A voice comes over the sound system.

The performance is about to begin.

There's a whoop.

Turns out, I'm not the only one super-pumped to be here tonight.

"You're all seated in the quiet zone," continues the voice. "So turn off your phones now. I mean now."

The order not to each any crunchy crinkly snacks also gets a cheer. This audience is hardcore about their theatre-going. They don't want to miss a moment. Maybe that's why there aren't any Pumpkin Pasties on offer (although, there should totally be Pumpin Pasties on offer. Come on now, it's September. I need my recommended daily dose of pastry).

Anyway, the play starts and it's just great. I fucking love Harry Potter. Like, I taught myself HTML when I was 12 years old so that I could code my own Harry Potter fansite. That's how long I've been in the fandom. Literally most of my life.

And I don't care what the haters say about Cursed Child. So what if it is retconning the books? I don't give a shit.

I adore Scorpius and I would die for him.

He is literally the cutest thing I've ever seen in my life.

Although I'm not quite sure whether I want to kiss him, mother him, or quite possibly, be him.

Hopefully not the first one. He is a child, after all. The character I mean. Not the actor. I checked.

Still, it's all rather confusing.

Whatever it is, Jonathan Case is doing a splendid job up there. And I'm so happy I could burst...

There's a crash. For a second I think it must be my heart exploding. But no, it's way too big a sound for that.

People are turning around in their seats. Whatever it was came from behind us.

"Lights! We need lights!" comes a call from one of the circles.

A few seconds later, the house lights are going up.

The cast press on. We try to concentrate but the drama happening in the higher levels cannot compete with what's happening on stage. I mean, Jack Thorne's great and all. But this is real life.

Eventually, the house lights dim once more, and we fall back into the goings-on at Hogwarts. And soon I get lost in the waft of cloaks as the performers swish about right in front of me.

I have to say, the movement is marvellous. If this lot ever give cloak-swishing classes I'm going to be first in line because they are giving the Bolshoi-boys a run for their money.

Applause fills the auditorium.

Interval time.

Within seconds a queue forms down the central aisle for ice cream.

An usher comes out to make an announcement. "It's cash only," she says. "Ice creams are three pounds fifty each. If you need to pay by card you need to go down to the bar."

No one is paying attention. Everyone is busy talking about the show.

"I like when the witches come on and do the thing. With the cloaks," says the girl sitting behind me,

"Me too," says her friend.

Me three.

"I loved the trolley witch," says the friend. "Did you see the two people in the dark? They just went like this then whoomph."

I nod along to their conversation. I also enjoyed the whoomph.

"They got rid of my story," says the girl, presumably while scrolling through the Cursed Child Instagram. "There was a proposal. Did you see it? And my story got bumped."

She doesn't sound super impressed.

"Did they say yes?"

"I don't know..."

I have a look at the programme.

You have to admire their commitment to the whole "keep the secrets" schtick they got going on. Not only is there a spoiler warning on the cast list, but they also put one on the preceding page, just in case your eyes land on a character name by accident. And it's not like we don't know they couldn't have sold two programmes if they didn't have a mind to. So, double kudos to them. I kind of wish they had taken the Hampstead Theatre approach to suppliers though. Back when Brandon Jacob Jenkins’ Gloria was playing, you had to go find an usher in the interval to cut open the seal on the spoiler-giving programme pages, which was super cool. Not that I did it. My Gloria programme remains in mint condition. Because I am exactly that type of programme nerd.

Another announcement is piped in. This one from Professor McGonagall herself. Well, Blythe Duff but, you know.

"For the sake of the wizarding world, please turn off any muggle devices," she begs us.

We get through the rest of Part 1 unscathed.

Well, almost. The final scene sends cries of horror throughout the auditorium (and some wet feet in the front row).

As the "to be continued..." banner lights up the empty stage, the level of excited chatter is so loud I fear this lot won't make it through to tomorrow night's performance.

"Please use all the doors," calls an impatient usher as we try to shuffle our way out. "We're closing the doors in two minutes! We'll see you tomorrow."

Yes, you will. I'm not leaving my boy Scorpius stranded in that situation.

Too hyped to even contemplate being cooped up on the tube quite yet, I skip through Piccadilly Circus and make my way to Green Park.

There's a lot of great shit going on in theatre right now, but for me, Cursed Child is where it's at. The stagecraft! The story! The... Scorpius! Okay, it's all Scorpius. I really love that blond boy.

Which reminds me: that proposal... It was a publicity stunt to advertise a dating app. Little fuckers.

Love is cancelled.

And I think I might need to bleach my hair.

Close Every Door to Me

Oh good lord. What the fuck is going on here? What the actual fuck...?

There are people on the pavement. People in the road. People standing in the way of cars, and people who are going to get run over if they are not careful.

I've never seen any thing like this.

No, wait. That's not true. I have seen something like this.

Not outside of protests though.

It's like a friggin' anti-Trump rally out here.

What the hell is going on?

"This is the Royal Circle and boxes queue only," hollers a man walking down the line on the opposite pavement. "Stalls are one queue along, and Grand Circle is two along."

Oh. Okay. So apparently getting into the London Palladium now involves queueing down the street. Which is strange. Because I've been to the Palladium before, and I've never encountered scenes that look as if they've been lifted straight out of a textbook on hyperinflation.

I join the queue for the stalls. I have an e-ticket for some reason, and I'm not happy about it, but I'm not about to go trotting off to the box office when there's this going on. Ten minutes arguing for a paper ticket might see the queues stretching all the way down the street, across the road, and into the Liberty habadashery department.

I tell myself it's good practice for post-Brexit Britain.

We shuffle forward inch by inch, the woman behind me muttering with every step.

It hasn't escaped my notice, that my queue, the one for the stalls, is on the opposite side of the road to the theatre. It hasn't escaped the notice of the people standing in the queue, while also, at the same time, standing in the middle of the road. Nor the notice of the taxis, trying very hard to drive through said road.

"Stupid people thinking they can get through here," says the woman behind me. I don't know whether she's referring to the taxi drivers or the queuers here. Or possibly: both.

As it's our turn to cross no-man's land, a pretty girl in a multicoloured shaggy jacket runs out to pose in front of the theatre signage. You got to respect a gal who not only dresses to theme, but also puts her life on the line for a photo. Instagram models are the heros we have, but don't necessarily want.

I make it across the road without getting run over, thank the theatre gods. The woman behind me also makes it across unscathed. I'm unclear about the gods' motivation on that one, but I suppose they have their reasons.

"Have your bags ready. There's checks both in and out the door," booms the queue-controller as I reach the doors.

"Can I just...?" asks the bag checker. She pokes around inside a little, prodding at the top layer with a single finger. "My colleague will check your ticket."

I get waved through the door and I pull my phone out. E-ticket it is then. I pinch my fingers and zoom in, instantly losing the barcode. Technology is not my friend. "Where is it...!?" I mutter as I search around the pdf for the damn thing. The ticket checker laughs, then beeps me in as the barcode sneaks into view.

I wind myself down the cream-coloured corridors, past the surprisingly subdued merch desk and into the bar. It's a very fancy bar. There's a twisting staircase, lots of old posters on the walls, and a display case with a model of the Palladium inside, topped by showgirls.

And a queue. Another massive queue. Stretching from the doors to the auditorium, round the corner and all the way back.

A front of houser comes round, via a shortcut. "Entrance to the stalls this way," she says, beckoning us forward. I'm immediately rammed in the back as the person behind me rushes up the steps.

I let him go ahead. He must be gagging to sit down.

Eventually, I get to the doors. There are two sets, with a tiny lobby in the middle. Like those porch areas people tack onto the front of their semis. Somewhere to keep the pram and the bikes and wellies and whatnot. Except here they're keeping a bottleneck of audience members, trying to squeeze through too many ushers.

I show the nearest one my phone. "Standing?" I ask.

"Head to the left," she says, pointing left. "And stand behind the gold bar."

Well, alrighty then.

I head left, walking down the back of the stalls, past the tech desk, past an endlessly long row of seats until, yes, there it is, a short gold bar right at the end.

There are a few people standing already. I dump my bag down next to them, as close to the middle as I can get.

It's very high. Too high for my five foot three inches to lean on. I could just about rest my chin on it if I had a mind to.

And then I realise something. I haven't seen anyone selling programmes.

I look around at the people sitting in the stalls. Prime programme-buying audience members. But none of them have one.

I scan the room for an usher, but there aren't any in here. They're all in the bottleneck.

Oh well. That's what intervals are for, I guess. Gives me an excuse to check out the merch desk.

Looks like the girl sitting in front of me has already hit it up. She's wearing a Joseph t-shirt with technicoloured text all over it.

I never know how I feel about wearing show merch to the actual show.

It demonstrates dedication though, and I respect that.

Unlike the man sitting in the row ahead of her. He's wearing a Thriller Live t-shirt. I turn away. I can't even look at him.

There's an usher standing behind me. He's not holding any programmes. "Are you with the five?" he asks, indicating the group next to me.

I shake my head. So does my neighbour. We don't know these people.

"Would you mind moving over to the other side? There's supposed to be ten on each side be we have eleven over here."

My neighbour picks up his bag and goes off to the other side.

Turns out, his sacrifice is not enough, because the usher is back. "Are you on your own too?" he asks me.

I almost laugh at the thought of me managing to convince someone to come stand with me at a weekday matinee performance of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. I'm sure this musical has a hella lot of fans. I'm just not friends with any of them.

"Do you want me to go over?" I ask, maintaining my composure like the theatre-going pro I am.

"If you don't mind," says the usher, very apologetically. "You'll have more space."

Turns out, that was a lie. The standing area down at the other end is full. I walk all the way to the end, where the golden bar turns into a solid wood panel and ask the woman on the end to squidge up a bit.

She stares at me blankly.

"Sorry," I apologise. "I just got moved here from the other side. Can we all move down a bit?"

Her stare continues. I wonder if there is something wrong with her eyes. She's not blinking.

The usher comes over.

"Can we make room for the lady?" he says in the polite tones of a front of houser who ain't taking no shit today.

One bloke shifts over and a squeeze into the gap.

"Did you not pay the money?" says the guy on the other side, his hand buried in a pot of Pringles.

"Sorry?"

"I thought you didn't pay the fee."

"Sadly, I did buy my ticket," I tell him. "They just had too many people standing over the other side."

Satisfied, he goes back to eating his crisps.

As the lights dim, there's a big cheer from the audience. They're so excited the air is almost crackling. Oh, no. Wait. That's my neighbour finishing off his Pringles.

Nevermind.

Still, Sheridan Smith gets a round of applause all to herself when she comes out. I join in. I do like Sheridan Smith. She was everything in that Hedda Gabler at The Old Vic. And yes, I did need to pick out her one significant non-musical theatre role to mention here. Because I am a pretentious twat. We long ago established that.

And I have to respect that she's the one cast member all in black, standing proud amongst a cast dressed in colours so bright it's making my retinas bleed just to look at them.

I'll admit, Joseph isn't my favourite Lloyd Webber. It's too... just too. Too bright. Too twee. Too school-playish with all those kids wearing fake-beards. It doesn't work for me.

Plus all that thing about dreams... I only have sympathy for the brothers. I'd sell my little pipsqueak sibling too if he insisted on telling me his boring-arse dreams every morning.

I do like the song where he's in prison though. I can fully support Joseph having an abandonment crisis in a dark cell while wearing only a loincloth. That's my jam. Right there.

As soon as the interval hits, I race back through the bar, down the cream-coloured corridor, and towards the merch desk.

There isn't a queue, and the woman behind the counter gives me a big grin as I approach.

"Hello, love!" she say.

I ask if I can get a programme.

"Of course, you can, my love. Would you like a standard programme or a brochure?” She points at the two options on the counter. The brochure is very large. Twice the size of the standard programme, and no doubt, twice the price.

"Ooo," I say, pretending to be making a decision. “Standard please."

"That's five pounds."

I fish around in my bag for my purse, which no matter how I pack it, always manages to sink to the bottom. "Sorry," I say, as I realise I'm taking far too long. "So much stuff!"

"Here, shall I move this so you can out your bag down?" she says, shifting over the programmes so that there's a free space on the counter.

It helps. I find my purse, and pay the monies.

She laughs, suddenly noticing what i’m wearing now my bag isn't in the way. "I love your t-shirt!" she says.

It is a good t-shirt. And worthy of a giggle.

At first glance, you may think it's one of those ubiquitous Joy Division t-shirts. But, oh, you would be wrong. The unknown pleasures of the pulse waves are interrupted by... cats. Lots of cats. And it says "Meow Division" across the top, because of course it does.

I take my music very seriously.

I go back to the bar.

"Yes, she's a big star over here," says a woman, trying to explain who Smith is to her friend. "She's a big TV celebrity."

Sheridan Smith? A big TV celebrity? I mean... yeah, but like... didn't you see her at The Old Vic?

I get out my programme, just to check the facts. And huh... Smith's biog doesn't mention Hedda Gabler. I begin to wonder if I imagined her Ibsen-phase.

"Ladies and gentlemen will you please take your seats. The show will resume in five minutes."

I quell the desire to reply: "Thank you, five."

I go back to my standing place.

The unblinking woman hasn't returned. But crisp-man has. With a packet of popcorn.

An usher makes his way down the aisle carrying a big white plastic bag. He dips down so people can chuck their rubbish in, giving an half cursey at every row.

The band start up, playing a medley of the act one songs.

A huge chunk of the audience clap along.

The conductor turns around to grin at us. He's having fun.

Everyone is having fun.

Spontaneous applause breaks out at seemingly inconsequential parts of the plot. Laughter rolls over the stalls with every campy move of the cast. As Smith encourages us to clap along in one number, and everyone enthusiastically joins in, it occurs to me that this might now be a standard weekday matinee. The fan-presence is high, and the end of the run is nigh. I might have found myself at a muck-up matinee.

At the final notes, everyone gets to their feet to applaud.

I'm already on my feet, so I let them get on with it.

It's time for the megamix, and people sit down to enjoy this blast through all the bangers of the show.

The stander who came with me from the other side sticks his fingers in his mouth and let's out a blasting whistle. "Well done, kids!" he shouts as the smaller members of the cast come forward.

"Do you want some more?" shouts Smith over the roar of whoops and hollers.

The roar grows even louder. Turns out they do.

"Come on! Do. You. Want. Some. More?!" repeats Smith, pumping her arm to indicate that we should be louder.

Yes, Sheridan. I think these people want more.

"Your turn now," she says. "Come on. Do whatever you want."

A woman in the front row gets to her feet and starts dancing. "Yes!" shouts Smith, pointing at her. "Go girl!"

A few more people join in and Smith gives them approving comments too. Soon everyone is back up and dancing. Or at least clapping.

Lights flicker around the audience.

Streamers descend on the stalls.

Dancing. Clapping. Singing. Music.

And then it's over. The cast wave as they disappear off stage. The three leads, Smith and Jac Yarrow and Jason Donovan, hang back to fling there arms around each other. And then they're gone too.

I decide to take their lead and slip out when the band are still blasting our their finale.

Living in revolting times

It is incredibly hard to get a photo of the Cambridge Theatre.

I don't claim to be a great photographer. I'm very much a point-and-clicker when it comes to this kind of thing, so when I say it's difficult, I don't mean it's hard to get a good photo of the Cambridge Theatre, I mean it's hard to get any photo.

This is not an issue of light (although I wouldn't exactly call Seven Dials a sun-trap) or finding somewhere to get a good angle from. No, it's people.

Here I am, standing in the small cake-slice corner between Monmouth Street and Mercer Street, lining up a great shot, and people keep on getting in the bloody way. If it's not tourists attempting to squeeze themselves between me and the lampost, it's bikes riding up on the pavement. And when those people have cleared, it's the Instagram girls, posing in the middle of the street, while their friends risk their lives to crouch down with their DLRs to get the perfect shot of Insta-babe's outfit against the background of Matilda the Musical.

As I wait for the photo shoot to finish, someone rams their suitcase into the back of my legs.

I think we can make a good guess as to who chose looks and who chose books in this scenario. And looks are winning.

Time to go in.

The doors are flanked either side.

Experience has told me that one of them is a ticket checker and the other a bag checker. But which is which? I cannot tell. This is like that logical deduction riddle. If one man in a suit checks only tickets, and the other only bags, what one question do you ask to gain safe entry to the theatre?

"Box office?" I try with the one on the right.

"Yup," he replies. "Just through here, but I need to check your bag first."

Well, that worked, I guess.

I open up my backpack for him and he prods around at the top layer before waving me in.

The Cambridge is very thirties. All Poirot fonts and... well, that's it really.

The box office is on the left, hidden behind a glass window, with holes at face level. Put there, presumably, so the box officers can breathe. The counter is fronted by mirrors etched with a vaguely art decoish pattern.

There are three men standing behind the glass, but a big family has just come in and they are spreading themselves out.

The box officer on the end leans out to one side and beckons me over.

"The surname's Smiles?" I say as I approach the bench.

He grabs the box of tickets.

"Maxine?" he asks, picking one out. "Here you go," he says, sliding it under the glass without waiting for an answer. I must be the only Smiles in tonight. Makes a change.

My next stop is the merch desk. Which, very pleasingly, is actually a desk. Or rather, a row of desks. The old fashioned wooden ones where the lid lifts up, and there's a small hole to fit your ink well in. The type of desk that I had at my school, despite my education happening long after the advent of biros. I think they thought it added to the aesthetic. Theyust have left them there to impress the parents. All those foreign dignitaries who wanted a classic English prep school education for their little darlings. And yes, I went to a fancy school. Keep up. It was certainly an education. The headmaster had to step down in my final year because of rumours that he was a bit too friendly with the boys, if you get my meaning.

Hmm. Probably not the best place to be remembering these things.

I buy myself a programme. It's six pounds. Not really much more to say on the matter. There's some other merch stuff on offer, but nothing is really speaking to me. I like the look of the Trunch hoodie, because you know I'm always into the villains, but it has the Matilda title treatment on the front which kinda negates the entire point of the thing. If you're the Trunch, you're the Trunch, you don't be wanting the name of that little maggot on your chest. Honestly, who dreamt that one up?

I'm also handed a voucher for cut-price sweets, which is actually a pretty sweet (... sorry) deal and one I might steal for my work.

Anyway, enough of this. I've got a lot of stairs to climb because I'm in the grand circle tonight, which is the one right at the tippy top of the theatre here and, because this is the West End and we don't like poor people around here, there's no entrance from the foyer. I have to go back out into the sunshine, and get in via another entrance, leading to the povvo stairs.

I'll give it to the Cambridge though, they actually thought about this. From the foyer doors, there's a roped-off corridor leading to the grand circle entrance, meaning that I don't have to be subjected to a second bag check. Well done to whoever came up with that.

Up all the stairs, passing ads for shows currently cluttering up the other LW theatres in town ("What will you see next?" they ask. All of them, Andrew. All of them.)

As I reach the summit, the posters give way to tilted frames advertising platinum blonde hair dye and national green hair day. Looks like we've gone a bit immersive up here, and I am appreciating the effort.

A front of houser catches my eye and I show him my ticket. "Through this door, on the left and one row up," he says, pointing to the door right next to us.

I go in. Passing the little merch stand. They have programmes and CDs on display, as well as those sweets, and what looks like cups of toxic fluid. I've never seen anything so bright claiming to be edible before. Red and yellow and green. They look like they belong in the opening scene of The Secret World of Alex Mack (yes, I'm old. Leave me alone).

I'm tempted to buy one. Prove myself as the true investigative journalist that I'm definitely not. But people who remember Alex Mack are too old to drink that many e-numbers in public.

Instead, I go find my seat.

There's a break in the rows up here, forming two sections with a corridor parting the rows like the red sea down the middle.

I'm in the top half, because I'm poor. But right at the front of the top half, because I'm a master ticket buyer.

Families come in toting arm-fulls of shopping bags, which they struggle to fit under their seats. Small children perch precariously on top, like baby dragons guarding their golden hoard.

Ushers run around handing out booster seats. A must all the way up here, as even with the benefit of the corridor in front of me, and a somewhat grown-up height, the front of the stage is still hidden from view to my adult-eyes.

But, you know, I've seen it before. So it's fine. I'm guessing you have too. As have the simply astonishing number of latecomers who don't seem even slightly bothered that they've missed the first fifteen minutes. So I'm not going to go into detail about the show, but I still think the interval is in a really weird place. Bruce Bogtrotter eating a cake is not a natural finishing point, nor is it a cliff-hanger. It has to be the most awkwardly placed interval since The Royal Ballet shoved an extra one into the already existing Alice in Wonderland when they realised that getting a ballerina to dance flat out for 90 mins was a touch mean.

Anyway, I go off to explore.

Up in the third-class tier, there are two front of house spaces to hang out in. The bar. Which is packed. And a room with nothing it it but a merch desk and a mirror. Which is also packed.

I have to dive out the way as a mum lobs an empty Sprite bottle at me, presumably aiming for the bin a whole two feet away from my two feet.

"Sorry," she says, already walking away.

Honestly, I've long come to accept that I'm invisible. I don't draw the eye. And I'm fine with that. I walk alone. I am as one with the shadows. But I draw the line at someone seeing me after acting like I ain't there. Commit to my imperceptibility, you cowards.

I go back inside. My row has a railing in front. I prop my feet up on the bar. This is quality seating action. More rows should have footrests.

Mr Wormwood and the son, Michael come out. I mean, Rob Compton and Glen Facey, as Mr Wormwood and son Wormwood, come out. There's a bit of banter with the audience. Don't try this at home, and all that. "We don't want any kids is the audience tonight going home and trying these things out," says Compton, meaning the disgusting business of reading books. I can't agree more. I read hundreds of books as a kid. Thousands. And look where it got me. Visiting over 200 theatres in eight months and getting bottles chucked at me. I’m a tragedy of wasted potential. If things had been different, I would have made a great bottle-thrower.

"Veruccas of the mind," he goes on.

He's not wrong.

"Who here's read a book?" Hands pop up all over the place. "You should be ashamed," he sneers. "You, madam, what's your name?"

She gives it.

He jabs his finger in her direction, chanting that she's a nasty bookworm, a worm, and books are stupid.

"She won't stop reading," he says, calling down after his onslaught of insults. "But she won't put up her hand in a theatre again."

And that's something we can all be grateful for.

And then we're off again.

Swings descend from the ceiling, and I get all teary-eyed over the When I grow up song, like I always fucking do.

Francesca McKeown's Matilda fights the good fight, brings down the baddies, and gets her happy ending.

Confetti shower for the people in the stalls, and then it's time to go home.

I trudge my way back down the stairs, feeling exhausted.

Matilda always makes me feel really sad. Helpless. Defeated.

If even this bright and brave little girl needs magical powers to overcome her oppressors what hope is there for the rest of us?

That's probably not the takeaway I'm supposed to get from this show, and no doubt I'm projecting, but... man, I think we could all do with some laservision right now.

What I did on my Bank Holidays

It’s three am. My alarm has just gone.

At some point, I thought this was a good idea and I haven’t had the energy to argue with myself about it yet.

Until now.

A small voice at the back of my head tells me it’s okay. I can just roll over and go back to sleep. No one will mind. No one will even know.

Apart from @_andy_tea on that there Twitter. Because I may have told him I was doing this.

But he won’t tell. I mean, probably. I hope not. One never knows with Twitter people. They're all weirdos.

Dammit. I'm going to have to get up.

So with an internal chant of DoItForTheBlogDoItForTheBlog I get up and start on the business of pulling myself into some form of existence that is acceptable for public viewing.

I would say the theatre gods are laughing at me, but even they are not up this early.

By 4am, I’m washed, dressed, eyelinered up, the cat is fed and I am out the door, scurrying down the down to catch the night bus into Central London.

I’m yawning so much I end up flagging the wrong one by accident. Sorry Mr Driver of the 266, you’re not going my way.

A few minutes later the N11 arrives and I clamber sleepily up to the top deck. It’s surprisingly full up here, considering it’s still dark out, on an August bank holiday, but there’s a seat free right at the front, so I get to ride in style the whole way into the West End.

Out at Trafalgar Square, I scurry, still yawning, towards Charing Cross Road.

It’s quiet. The only people about are a couple of giggling girls struggling to keep upright on their stilettos.

I pass the Garrick, where there is very much not a queue for Bitter Wheat tickets.

Past the Theatres Trust, who have recently claimed there are only 263 theatres in London (hilarious!), and then, up ahead, my destination. The Wyndham’s.

I check my phone. It’s 4.45am. And there’s a queue.

One two threefour people. And someone talking to them. A homeless man. Asking for money.

“Is this the day seat queue?” I ask.

“Yup,” number three in the queue confirms. “You’re in the right place.”

“Oh, good.” I join the end of it. Number five.

Seeing that we are all distracted, the homeless man walks away.

“Thanks,” says number three. “We’re really grateful.”

It was no problem at all. I’ve had a lifetime’s worth of practice of chasing people away.

We settle into silence. There’s not much going on. We stare at out phones, lighting ourselves up as beacons for anyone wandering around at this time of the morning.

“Sorry,” says a bloke coming up to me. “What’s the time?”

I tell him it’s five o’clock.

Five o’clock.

Five hours until the box office opens.

At least, I hope it’s only five hours. It could be more than that. Box offices have a habit of opening late on bank holidays.

Andy T (of Twitter) popped in to ask yesterday for me (I mean, he might have had other reasons for asking, but I'm choosing to believe it was for me), and they said it was a standard 10am start. But you can never trust the word of a box officer who’s not working that shift.

I shrug off my jacket, place it carefully on the ground, and sit down on top of it.

My vintage 49er doesn’t do much in the way of padding, but at least it's some sort of layer between me and the tarmac.

At seven minutes past, three more people arrive. “Are you trying to get tickets for Fleabag?” asks the girl, who is clearly in charge of this outing. “Is this where the queue ends?”

Only one of them is wearing a jacket, and the three of them try to squeeze themselves onto it.

I brought a book, but it’s too dark to read. So instead I get out my notebook and start writing up last night’s theatre trip. My handwriting is illegible at the best of times, so the darkness isn’t going to make much of a difference now.

At 5.21am two more people arrive.

“I’m just trying to work out which end is which,” says a young woman, standing back from the line to take us all in.

We point her in the right direction. “It’s this end,” someone tells her.

“Yeah,” says her friend. “You can’t just join the front of the queue again.”

The “again” is very pointed. They must do this a lot. Except, usually experienced day seaters know which end of the queue to join.

I think they might be a little drunk.

They too settle down.

That’s ten of us now.

The street-sweepers have started their rounds.

Across the way, a few tourists emerge from the Hippodrome Casino. The security guard on the door crosses his arms and watches them until they are safety deposited into their Uber.

People pause as they walk past to look at us with interest.

“What are you guys all waiting for?” asks a man riding by on a bike.

“Tickets for a play,” explains one of the drunk girls.

“Aladdin?”

She laughs. “No! Fleabag!”

He loops round, doubling back on himself to approach the front of the queue. “Can you help a homeless guy out?”

We all shake our heads.

He rides off, with a shout of “are you all on ecstasy?!” over his shoulder.

Then nothing.

The sun begins to rise.

I have about 700 words down in my notebook. I can’t write anymore. I turn to reading. The Long Earth. I’ve been trying to avoid this one, knowing the number of Terry Pratchett books in the world that I haven’t read yet are dwindling rapidly. But day seating seems to be as good a time as any to crack this one open. After a 3am start, I deserve it.

Just before seven, a couple arrive together on bikes. The woman points at us each in turn, counting us up before air-punching. They got here in time.

The street sweeper has made it to our side of the row. I tuck in my feet so he can get at those tricksy cigarette butts.

The man on his bike is back. “The show is cancelled everyone!” he calls as he rides past. Something tells me he’s a bit of a jokester.

The street sweepers and partygoers are all gone now. The roads have been taken over by delivery vans. People in the queue take it in turns to go to Pret, sharing intelligence about whether their porridge pots are out yet, and codes to the loo for those who just need a pee.

I put my book down. I can’t read anymore.

My legs are aching. I stretch them out in front of me and blankly watch this little corner of the world wake up.

A group of giggling young woman approach us, asking the number one queued what time she got there.

“Four,” she says.

“Four?!”

The supreme ruler of the queue nods and confirms it. “Yes, four.”

“Okay then…” they walk away whispering and giggling.

At ten to ten, I stand up. I can’t sit on that pavement anymore. Everything hurts. My back. My legs. But most of all, my bottom.

The doors open.

A woman dressed all in black comes out.

I like her immediately.

“I have 33 standings!” she shouts so that we can all hear.

Everyone turns round to look at the queue. It’s grown, running all the way down the side of the Wyndham’s and beyond. Is that less or more than 33? I can’t tell. I try to count, but loose my place after twenty or so.

“We do have two single seats,” says the woman in black. “But they are very high in price.”

Number three in the queue asks how much they are.

“One is 125, and one is 150. I think. Don’t quote me on that,” she says as I attempt to quote her on that. “Let me colleague know if you want one.”

We all shuffle our feet. No one queues for five hours to buy a 150 quid ticket when there is a ten pound one on offer.

“I’ll be counting down the row,” she goes on. “So we all know where we are. If you’re standing, it has to be you attending. You’ll be asked for ID and the card you paid with when you pick up your tickets this evening.”

A little part of my brain wants to ask why we can’t get our tickets right away, but it is quickly hushed by the surrounding neurons. It’s still far too early for questions.

As a couple of front of housers work on getting the doors open, the woman in black chats to queuers one and two. “What time were you here?” she asks. “Very good!”

And we are let in. Two at a time. Like the ark.

“I can’t wait to go home and sleep,” I tell the woman in black as queuers three and four go inside.

She laughs. “I’ve had a lot of people tell me that. That they’re going straight back to bed.”

I remember her question to the first people in the queue. “What’s the earliest you’ve had someone arrive.”

“We had a couple fly over from Spain. They came at midnight. With a tent.” She looks over as number three in the queue comes back out. “You can go in now.”

Into the foyer, and over to the box office, set into the wall on the right.

Two people are on duty.

Queue member number four is getting her details into the system.

I go to the other box officer.

“Morning!” I say, as cheerily as I can manage.

My box officer starts tapping away on his computer, giving me the spiel as he works. Tickets are non-transferrable. You’ll need to bring ID.

I nod along.

“Can I have your postcode?”

I give it.

“What’s your surname?”

I give that too.

“I think I have an account,” I say, knowing full well that I do. This ain’t my first trip to a Delfont Mackintosh theatre.

“It looks like you might,” he says. “What’s your first name.”

“Maxine?”

“Yup,” he says, agreeing that I am indeed the Smiles he has on the system. “There you go. Now, is that cash or card.”

It’s card.

Now ten pounds further into my overdraft, he hands me a ticket. Or rather, the voucher.

“Sign this please,” he says, sliding over a pen.

And with a flourish of my name, I’m off. Back outside in the sunshine, and utterly unsure of what to do next. I’m exhausted and yet the day as only just begun.

Nine hours later, I’m back.

The Wyndham's has shed its sleepy exterior and it’s now buzzing with excitement.

“This door if you have your ticket, or this one if you’re picking up,” says the man on the door.

I’m picking up, so I go through the second door.

A bag checker is waiting inside. He peers inside my rucksack, feels the bottom, and then pauses, staring at my chest.

“Is that… Hanson?” he says, stepping back in horror from the sight of my t-shirt.

“Yeah…” I say, pulling it out for him to get a proper look at the family portrait of the Hanson brothers, with NIRVANA emblazoned beneath them. “It’s a joke t-shirt,” I explain.

“Oh… good. I was going to say…”

I smile. I fucking love this t-shirt.

Bag checker thoroughly confused, it’s time for me to go to the box office.

“Can I see your ID please?” asks the box officer after I had over my signed voucher.

I give him my driving license. Provisional because of course I never learnt how to drive.

He looks from one to the other, checking, and then with a smile hands over my ticket. “Just to remind you, if you leave before the end of the performance, you can’t go back in. Enjoy!”

The foyer of the Wyndham’s is very comfortable looking. In a side-room-in-an-art-gallery kind of way. There are sofas around the walls and large paintings that seem to belong outside of any recognisable artistic movement. There are pillars and stiped wallpapers. The ceiling is covered with cherubs.

Where next? The merch desk of course. I’m getting me a programme.

No queue, four pounds fifty, and I can pay by card. Doesn’t get much better than that.

Right. Downstairs. Benefit of being early in the queue. I get to stand in the stalls instead of the back of the balcony.

There’s a ticket checker down here. He tears off the stub while he reminds me that there’s no readmissions. As if I could forget.

Round the corner and down a bit more. I pause to admire the carpet. All fancy florals and woven Ws. Nice.

Inside it’s your classic West End auditorium. Cream-coloured walls and curved boxes, with gold twiddly bits iced on top.

I head to the back. Standers are cramped against the back wall. So many that they some of them are spilling down the side.

“Are standers allowed over on the other side?” I ask one of them, pointing to the completely empty wall on the other there.

She shrugs and says they were directed to stand on this side.

I decide to risk it and slip through the rows, pacing up and down this section of wall to find the best spot.

A few minutes later, number three from the queue turns up.

“Is that… who are they…?” he says, looking at my t-shirt.

I explain the whole Hanson/Nirvana joke thing. He doesn’t look convinced.

Clearly my t-shirt doesn’t play well to the Fleabag crowd.

An usher comes over. “Hello. You’re all standing,” she says. We nod. We are indeed all standing. “Just to let you know, you can’t take any empty seats. And you can’t sit down on the floor.” Right. No sitting for us. At the Wyndham’s you pay ten quid to see the show, and the other hundred to sit down. “It’s a health and safety issue,” she explains. Ah. “In case there’s a fire we need to ensure a free exit.” Okay. Fine. That makes sense. “If you leave, there’s no readmittance. You’ll be taken to the Stalls bar and you’ll have to watch the rest of the show on the screen.”

“Don’t worry, we’re not leaving!” says queued number nine.

I have a quick flick through of the programme. It’s a standard Delfont Mackintosh jobby. Lots of recycled articles that you’ll see again and again for all their shows. But there’s a nice little piece about how Fleabag came about, and the new writing programmes that helped it happen. Great intel for anyone who wants to be the next Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

I try to get comfortable. There’s a recess in the wall behind me which is making it tricky. But at least there's carpet under my feet. And it's probably for the best I'm not sitting down. Five hours sitting on cold tarmac have made themselves known in the bum region.

The lights go down and… nothing. I expected a gasp or a whoop or something. You get gasps and whoops when the lights go down at big shows. Can you imagine the lights going down at, I don’t know, Hamilton, or Cursed Child, and there not being a gasp or a whoop?

As Waller-Bridge rushes out from the wings, a stander near me raises her hands to clap, but quickly lowers them when she realises no one else is in a clapping mood.

I sink against the wall, feeling a little let down. The last thing I wanted was to be in a silent audience. I’d just have stayed at home and watched series one on the iPlayer.

But it doesn't take long to get us going. Snort laughs and tentative giggles turn into fully-grown guffaws and by the end we're wincing and howling at the fate of poor Hillary.

As Waller-Bridge takes her bows, the stalls stand to ovate, starting at the front row and working back, like a tidal wave of applause crashing into the back wall.

I'm almost thrown back by the force of it.

"Well, that was worth it," says queuer number three as the house lights go up.

"Yup," I agree. "Now it's worth it."