Chateauneuf du Programme

Ah, the glamour of the West End. The bright lights of Piccadilly Circus. The hoards of French teenagers hanging out with Eros. The shops heaving with Union Jack merch. You can't beat it.

Honestly, I can't think of a better place to watch a musical, set in Peckham, and based on a TV show that aired its last episode before I was born.

If you hadn't guessed, I'm off to see Only Fools and Horses. Only Fools and Horses the Musical, I should add. Because, yup. It's a musical. Something that managed to escape me until I saw one of the banners outside the theatre, buffeting in the wind.

I'm not sure who thought that what Del Boy was lacking as a character was a heartfelt ballad, but someone did, because it's now a thing. And I'm here to see it.

At the Theatre Royal Haymarket.

What ever happened to the Haymarket?

No, I'm not dissing their programming choices. At least, not right now. I just mean, wasn't there a thing? It was for sale a few years ago, right? And, like, wasn't there a Kickstarter to raise money to buy it? On behalf of a collective that would use it to programme female writers. Or something like that.

Anyway, it's clear from where I'm standing on Suffolk Street that they were not successful. Which is a shame.

Not that there's anything wrong with the idea of Only Fools and Horses. The Musical.

Full disclosure, I actually really loved that show as a kid.

It was one of the few things we would watch as a family. That and Are You Afraid of the Dark.

Yeah, there was always quality TV playing in the Smiles household.

Back in the early nineties, it took a lot to convince my Mum to switch over from the newly launched QVC. But she was always down for a rerun of whatever classic Trotter-tale was on that afternoon. We'd sit together, giggling away, having great fun, until the end credits would roll and a second later Joan Rivers would be trying to sell us a necklace covered in glittery eggs. I sometimes used to wish that Derek Jason would join the Midnight Society to help stop the curse of home shopping.

I jostle my way through the Phans crowding the opposite pavement on their way to Her Maj's Theatre and head in.

The Haymarket has that classic West End layout which keeps all the different tiers separate, with different entrances for each of the circles to ensure that there is no disgusting mixing of the classes.

What it doesn't have, is any indication of where the box office is.

I examine each of the doors, and pick the one in the middle because it doesn't have a queue.

I find myself in the foyer, and here I find the queues. Two of them. One on the left. One on the right.

"Err, box office?" I ask the nearest front of houser.

He points to the one on the right.

Ah. Yeah. Of course. I should have guessed that. It's the classic hole-in-the-wall arragement. My favoruite kind.

I give my surname and get a ticket in exchange. No fuss. No questions. Easy.

That done, I go back outside to see what door I need to go through.

Upper Circle and Gallery? Nope.

Private Boxes? Nope.

Royal Circle? That's the one.

I join the line, and find myself queueing to get back into the same exact foyer I just left.

Fuck's sake.

At least I'm getting the full Haymarket experience I suppose. Bag checks and all.

"I'm just going to need to check your bag," says the bag checker. "If it's full to the brim we might need to move some stuff."

It is full to the brim. I carry around a lot of stuff. Including the programme from my matinee today. I hope he doesn't notice that.

"Do you mind if I look under here?" he says, pointing to my scarf which is buddled up on top of the pile. I move it for him. "Lovely," he says, as he has a little poke around in what must be the most gentle and well-handled bag check I've had on this marathon. No squeexing of bottoms and touching things without permission here. A fully consensual bag check. Very 2019. I like it.

"Now," he says, as I zip up my bag. "You go through the door right in front of you."

And I'm in.

But I don't go through the door right in front of me though.

I have another stop to make first.

The merch desk.

This was the queue that confused me earlier, but there's no queue now.

"Can I get a programme?" I ask the lady behind the desk.

"Of course!" she beams. "That's ten pounds."

Blimey. "Blimey." I'll admit it's been a while since I did the West End. But still. Ten pounds. Fucking hell. "Okay," I say. What else can I do but agree? I mean... I'm eight months into the marathon. I can't baulk now. And it's not like I haven't paid more.

"I like your purse," she says as get out my debit card.

I thank her. It is a nice purse. It's in the shape of an elephant. I've had it since I was at uni. He's looking a bit sad and creased now, but he still makes me smile. So he stays.

"Are you looking forward to the show?" she asks brightly. I can see she's doing her bestest to help me recover from the price-shock.

"Yeah, kinda," I say, feeling guilty about not being more enthusiastic.

It's not her fault that I'm only here for marathon reasons.

"I know what you mean," she says, nodding sympathetically. I'm not sure she does, but I'm really appreciating the effort. This is customer service excellence. Whoever is doing the training at the Haymarket needs one hell of a payrise. And perhaps should consider tackling the staff at the Soho as their next project.

"I'm sure it is," I say, trying my best to be positive. "I just have like, a mental block or something."

"You'll come out smiling," she promises before offering me a receipt.

I hope she's right.

I go through the door, as directed, and start walking up the stairs. They're well fancy. Custom carpets with the letter H woven into them topped with little crowns.

At the top, a front of houser steps out to intercept me. I show him my ticket.

"Great," he says, all smiles and friendless. "Just through the door ahead and on the left. Bars and toilets are down there," he says, pointing off to the right.

A second later a programme seller stops me to ask if I know where I'm going.

This is starting to get a bit intense. I'm not used to all this niceness. It's like Pret love-bombed all over the theatre. Soon they'll be offering me free coffees and tweeting me heart emojis.

I find my seat without further assistance and settle down in the front row to find out exactly what ten pounds means in the world of programmes.

I'll give them this: it's hefty. Lovely paper stock. And some great artwork. They have Grandad's army discharge record, dating profiles for the characters, the menu of Sid's Cafe, and a whole double-page spread of classified ads from the Peckham Echo. They sure had a lot of fun making this. And perhaps all these cute bits are worth ten quid to a superfan. However, this musical is supposed to be set in the eighties. And yet the classified ads are full of mobile numbers, and even worse, 020 area codes, which I'm sure I don't need to remind you, weren't a thing until 2005.

I put the programme away and concentrate on the theatre. It's really lovely in here. All chandeliers and paintings of naked nymphs. When the choice came to go big or go home, they went big. And then bigger. It looks like the decorators were in a Rococo-off in who can add the most twiddly bits to their sections. And better yet, it's haunted. So, you know I'll be keeping an eye out for theatre ghosts.

My neighbour arrives and she is very dressed up. Matching bag and purse. One of those tweedy Chanel jackets. Hair is freshly blown and she's carrying a Selfridges shopping bag on one arm and a suited-up boyfriend on the other.

I hide my battered black rucksack under my chair.

As I take in the rest of the audience, I realise that I am properly underdressed, which is not a feeling I get all that often. I like my clothes. I like to dress up. In dresses. Sometimes skirts. I literally don't even own a pair of jeans. I only have one pair of trousers, which I dig out if I need to hike up a cliff or something, but otherwise, it's all skirts and belts and vintage trinkets. But my studded clompy boots are marking me out as a slob in the midst of all these kitten heels.

The lights dim. There's an announcement.

Switch off phones, pagers, and walkmans. Because noise isn't "pukka or cushty."

That gets a giggle. And with the audience still laughing, we're off. And... it's exactly what you'd think it would be. An extended episode of Only Fools. With songs.

And yes, that includes the theme music, which everyone in the audience joins in enthusiastically with.

I mean, everyone apart from me. Because I don’t do singing.

As the set rotates to take us inside the Trotter residence, there’s a coo as Grandad appears in his chair. But my neighbour's bloke isn't having it. "That's not Paul Whitehouse!" he mock-whispers to Chanel Jacket.

Oh dear. Someone left it a bit too late to book their tickets, and missed out on the original cast. Probably was too busy matching her shoes to her bag.

Despite being set in South London, they make full use of their position opposite Her Majesty's Theatre and take every opportunity to mock Phantom of the Opera, even sending Rodney and Cassandra off on a date there. Which is a nice, gentle, in-joke for those whose only knowledge of theatres are the ones they say on the way in from the tube station.

It's the interval now, and I'm not sure I really want to be the goth-girl lurking in the bar, so I stay where I am, drinking in the Roccoco joy. As the auditorium empties, I peer into all the dark corners for any sign of spirits, but the only ones I spy are in the hands of people making their way back from the bar.

I bet the real ghosts all being kept busy by the ushers. Having their ectoplasm mopped up and the being sent to sit on the naughty step when they try and scare an audience member.

"Sorry, can I be a nuisance?" asks Chanel Jacket's bloke. Without Chanel Jacket. But with Chanel jacket. He drapes it over the edge of the circle. Carefully folded.

An usher comes over. I get excited that she might be here to shoo off a ghost, but no, she wants the tweedy jacket removed. Chanel Jacket's bloke drapes Chanel jacket over her seat instead.

When Chanel Jacket returns, she rummages around in her bag and pulls out a folding fan. It's already half unfolded. She flaps it around it its half-cocked state and I begin to grow suspicious about the matching accessories and tweedy jacket. I'm not sure how a woman can rise to such levels of sartorial splendour without learning how to flick open a fan properly.

I'm just about to offer to teach her, but she twists round in her seat, digging her knees into my leg, and I decide that I'm not cut out for the world of fan education. So I let her flap it around ineffectually. An impressive outfit ruined by terrible fan skills.

We're back in Peckham now, with the cast doing their mostest to give us a good time and Tom Bennett's Del Boy always ready with a wink for the audience.

And after a rollicking sing-along as a send-off, and one final dig at the Phantom, we're sent back into the West End.

But Peckham with forever remain in our hearts.

Unfortunately.

I live here on the corner, I am sucking in the fumes

It’s the start of Camden Fringe today! To celebrate, I’m watching a show that is not in Camden. And not the one I’d actually booked to see.

I was supposed to be at 365 tonight, a play I know nothing about other than it was going to be performed in the Phoenix Arts Club, which, let me tell you, is a tricky venue to pin down. But the show was cancelled. Giving me a Monday off. Now I can’t be wasting a Monday night on Netflix, not when I still have over a hundred more theatres to get to, so I checked back in on the fringe, and found Class, a verbatim play, opening at the Tristan Bates. A West End theatre, as I’m sure you know. But only by way of its location. I would class it as a fringe venue really. Not that I’ve ever been.

The Tristan Bates has always confused me. Mostly because, even though I know where it is, right on the corner of Earlham Street and Shaftsbury Avenue, I’ve never worked out how to get in. There’s the big square sign right there. But with a cafe on one side, and what looks like the entrance to the flats above on the other, I’ve been left with the impression that it must be some Platform 9 3/4 situation.

Oh well. I guess I’m going to have to work it out.

As I stand there, on that corner between Earlham Street and Shaftsbury Avenue, I take my photos of the building, and realise maybe, that big yellow neon sign saying the actors centre, was where I was meant to be.

I have no idea what the actors centre is (lower case-ness and lack of apostrophe is all on them), but I have some vague recollection of seeing the logo on the Tristan Bates website while booking my ticket. So, that’s probably an indication that I should follow the yellow neon sign.

Inside, there’s a desk. It could be a box office. Hard to tell.

“I’m here to pick up a ticket…?” I say, letting the question mark drop into place at the end of my very hesitant sentence.

“Yes?”

“The surname’s Smiles?” I say, wondering how long we can keep this question-rally going before one of us hits a full stop right into the net.

The woman behind the counter looks something up on her computer before reaching into a small box. Admission tokens! Oh good. I made it.

I’m feeling rather over-confident now that I know I’m in the right place, so I attempt to lob over a difficult one.

“Is there a freesheet?” I ask.

The box officer gives me the kind of look that makes me think I just accidentally asked for an autographed photo of Trump, in the act of Tweeting on his golden throne.

I press on. “Like, a cast sheet?” The look of confused horror doesn’t clear. “It doesn’t matter if there isn’t,” I add hurriedly. “I just thought I’d ask.”

“No,” says the other lady behind the counter, hurredly getting up and coming out from behind the desk. “But we do have this.” She grabs one of the flyers from the rack and hands it to me. “It’s just a flyer,” she explains.

“That’s perfect, thank you!” I tell her. And it is perfect. There’s a cast list on the back. And a run down of the creatives. It’s everything I need on one smart piece of card.

Now that’s sorted, I’m directed over to the bar. Down a small ramp, and around the corner.

It’s a bit nice in here. Cocktails are advertised as £5.50. There’s a box full of KitKats and Bounty Bars on display. And over on the other side, sofas are lined with a yellow brick wall and rows and rows of books.

The sofas are taken, so I set up shop at the counter overlooking them. Thankfully, there’s a step underneath to help my launch myself up onto the bar stool – always a challenge for me, being on the smaller side and rather inept when it comes to balance.

Through the glass doors on the far wall, people come in and out, greeting those waiting on the sofas with hugs and kisses, and my heart begins to sink. It’s going to be one of those audiences, isn’t it? Where everyone knows everyone, and they are all connected to someone involved in the production. Great fun to be in those ranks. Really unpleasant when you’re the outsider.

An announcement comes over the sound system. “Good evening ladies and gentlemen the doors are now open to...” I can't make out the rest. If they include instructions as to the location of the theatre, I can’t hear them.

I glance around, but no one else is moving. My neighbours on the counter haven’t even looked up.

Am I meant to go through the glass doors? They don’t look very likely. But then nothing about this place has looked very likely.

The box officer appears. “Are you here for the show?” she asks the group on the sofa. “The doors are now open.” They muddle to their feet, and then the box officer comes over to the counter. “Hello ladies! Did you hear the announcement? The doors are now open.”

Turns out the doors are back the way we came. Round the corner, up the ramp, past the box office and round. There’s a door lurking down here, with a chalkboard giving the show times. 7.45 - Class. The other time slots are all empty.

Through the door, and we’re in.

It’s a neat little theatre. Brick walls painted black. A floor level stage. Loose chairs, but set on a raked platform.

I decide it’s time to return to my traditional seating choice: the end of the third row.

Bit of squidging past the person already in, but the seats are alright once you’re sat down. Leg room isn’t great, but hey, it’s the fringe! Shows are short, and being ever so slightly uncomfortable is part of the experience.

Lights dim, and the cast come on. Alyce Louise-Potter and Kelsey Short. All dungerees and earnest smiles.

They have earphones in. I can see the white wires dangling. No airpod nonsense here. They begin speaking, echoing the voices playing in their ears. They’re being interviewed. On the subject of class. What it is. What they define themselves as. Working class, it seems. That’s how this pair consider themselves.

With a switch from flat caps to retro fast food paper hats, they become a new pair. These ones aren’t so sure about their class. Working or middle? Hard to tell. One owns her own house, she says proudly. With five bedrooms. You can’t do that if you’re working class.

She’s not wrong.

Perhaps there are only two classes nowdays. The home owners and the home loanees. Everything else is pedantry. Accent. Education. How you hold your knife. All irrelevant in the face of an ability to acquire a mortgage.

On they go, switching it up, becoming different people as they wade through this quagmire of the class system, covering accents and jobs and stereotypes and pride.

It’s so refreshing to hear class being talked about with such openness and honestly, in the words of real people and not playwrights. I’ll admit, I haven’t always been the biggest fan of verbatim theatre. Most people are quite dull without the and of a good editor. I mean, they’re probably not. I’m just a useless conversationalist and never know the right questions to ask. So like, I totally admit me finding people boring is entirely my own fault. That doesn’t stop me from having trouble listening to the chatter if strangers though.

But here the interactions are so fast, the bonds between the pairs so palpable, and the actors, so charming, I can’t help but smile as they wade into the family history of unnamed strangers.

Plus, it’s a fringe show. So it’s only a hour. Which is a mega bonus and aligns well with my in-bed-by-ten philosophy.

As we head out, everyone turns left, making their way back to the bar. They’re going to be making a night of it. No doubt they’ll joined by members of the production soon enough.

As for me, all on my lonesome and not friends with anyone in the cast, I go straight forward, pushing the door open and stepping back onto the corner between Earlham Street and Shaftesbury Avenue.

If I race for the tube, I might just make it back to Hammersmith before the clock strikes 9.30.

A bottle full of glitter

Back before I started this marathon, I really liked the Soho Theatre. Well, I had positive feelings towards it anyway. What with its neon lights in the bar, and the bright pink logo. It’s cool. It made me feel cool just being there. Not that I went all that often. But every now and then there’d be a show, say… a new Philip Ridley, or a Jack Thorne, that would draw me in. The tickets are cheap, so there was nothing to stop me going. So i’d buy one, trot off to Dean Street, watch the show, enjoy it, and then leave happy enough. And I’d soon return to my default state of never really thinking about the Soho except when they have an interesting show on.

But this marathon has changed the way I look at things. With my focus now away from the work, I see theatres differently. And I have to be honest, I don’t think I actually like the Soho all that much anymore.

I’d go so far as to say I actively dislike the Soho.

Enough that I don’t really want to go in.

Here I am, standing on the pavement of Dean Street, watching a film crew chivvy people off of the road and away from thick ropes of electrical cables, and I really don’t want to go in.

I message Helen. “I’m here but gonna go for a little walk,” I say, turning around and slipping into a side street.

A few minutes later, a message pops up on my phone. “Ok. Do you want a bubble tea?”

Well, obviously I do.

I lean against a lamppost to message her back in the affirmative. And then wait. Two minutes. Three minutes. How long does it take to order a bubble tea?

After five minutes I figure it’s time to head back.

The film crew are still standing in the middle of the road with their broad shoulders and hi-vis jackets, eyeing up anyone who dares step over their cables.

I hop over them, and make my way into the entrance.

I can barely get through the door. The queue at the box office is so long its mingling with the mass of people trying to press themselves into the bar. I hang back, waiting for it to clear.

“Next?” calls one of the ladies behind the box office.

I look to someone standing nearby. I make a “are you waiting?” style gesture to her. She doesn’t look up.

“Yes? Next!” shouts the box officer, sounding more than a little pissed off.

And so it begins.

“The surname’s Smiles,” I say, going up to the counter.

“Show?” she snaps.

“Cocoon,” I say, reflecting her rapped-out style. The show is called Cocoon Central Dance Team: The Garden Party, but there’s no time for multi-syllable phrases at the Soho.

She pulls a ream of tickets free from the Cocoon box.

“And the postcode?”

I give it, and she rips away the receipt and all the additional ticket elements the printers churn out, before handing me the twin pink slips.

I turn around and almost walk into someone.

It’s Helen.

“Do you like watermelon,” she says, holding out a pink cup so bright it’s almost Soho Theatre branded.

I cringe. “I hate watermelon,” I admit.

With a nod, she swaps the cup on offer. This one is brown.

I fumble around with my phone and tickets.

Helen watches me for a second. “Hang on,” she says. “Let me put the straw in for you.”

Bless Helen. She knows I can’t handle things as complicated as sticking a straw through a foil top.

“Shall we go outside?” I ask, with my newly-strawed cup in hand. “Oh my god, this is really good.”

It is really good. The boba are super chewy and the brown liquid smooth and sweet. Just want I needed after a hard day working down the print-mines.

“It’s black sugar,” explains Helen as we step onto the pavement.

“Like burnt sugar?”

Helen gives me a look. It’s a very serious look. “No,” she says. “Black sugar is all the rage in Asia. Everything is black sugar flavour. It’s not burnt sugar. It’s black sugar…. White people are so ignorant.”

I mean, I can’t fault her there.

Black or burnt, I suck it down greedily. It really is good.

I leave it to the last possible moment, but at 7.27pm I have to admit it’s time to go back inside.

We’re in the Downstairs theatre tonight. The Soho Theatre’s cabaret space. I even booked us spots at one of the cabaret table, which are a whole two pounds more expensive than the seats at the back.

“Can you finish your drinks please?” says the front of houser guarding the stairs down to the basement.

“Is there a bin anywhere?” asks Helen.

“Round the corner,” says the front of houser pointing back towards the box office.

Helen goes round the corner, finding the bin tucked up under the counter. I follow behind, getting a mouthful of boba in my efforts to finish my drink before chucking it. I bend down and push the cup into the very inconveniently located bin. It’s already full to the brim. I don’t envy the person who has to empty that.

Back to the stairwell, and I show the front of houser our tickets. She waves us downstairs.

A neon sign greets us: Soho Theatre Downstairs it screams in blazing blue, stark against the dark walls.

No white paint and pink accents down here. It all red and black and slightly seedy. Photos of past performers on stage line the way down. I spot Tim Minchin amongst the faces as we race downstairs.

There’s another ticket checker down here.

“Fourth row back, two tables in,” she says, glancing at the tickets.

I look at the space.

Fourth row back, two tables in.

All I see is a clutter of tables and chairs.

I try and count them.

One. Two Three. Four.

And second table in.

There are two seats free here. This must be it.

I squeeze through, dumping my bag on the chair and wriggling myself between the tiny gap beside our table.

It’s very cramped in here. The back of my chair is knocking against the back of a chair belonging to the table next to me.

The row is indicated via a small sign propped up on the table top. The seat numbers scrawled onto the table’s surface. “5, 6, 7, 8,” out table calls out, clearly getting ready to audition for the next A Chorus Line revival.

I look around. I’ve lost Helen. She’s disappeared.

Oh well. I’m sure she’ll be fine. She knows how to stick a straw into bubble tea. That’s the mark of a grown up if ever there was one.

“I couldn’t find you!” says Helen, plonking herself down in the seat next to me. She gets out her fan and flicks it open. If you’ve ever wondered where I learnt my fan-flicking skills, the answer is that it’s from Helen. She’s not just a master straw-pusher, you know.

“Do you want a drink?” she asks.

I want to tell her not to be silly, that she just bought me boba tea, but I don’t think I’m ever getting out of this seat, and, well… I kinda want a G&T.

“It’s up to you,” she says. “I’m not fussed either way.”

Well, in that case… “I wouldn’t say no to a gin and tonic,” I tell her.

With a snap of her fan, she gets up and goes to the bar.

I look around.

Ahead of us is the stage. Raised.

Behind are the cheap seats. Although they look quite nice. Velvet benches. With slim tables fixed in front of them. They look a good deal more comfortable than the cabaret set-up out front.

A second later, Helen’s back.

“That was weird,” she says, sitting back down. “When I went up, the woman there,” she says, inclining her head in the direction of the bar, “she kind of blocked my way. I when I asked if I could get a drink, she said the bar is closing…”

“Closing?” I say, picking up on the word. “So… not closed?”

“Well exactly!” says Helen. “That’s what I said. ‘Closing, or closed?’ And then she says ‘closed’ and then turns her back on me.”

“Fucking rude.”

“It was quite.”

“But also like… notice how the show still hasn’t started yet,” I say, with a wave of my hand to indicate the absence of anyone on stage. “They could have totally made you a drink by now.”

“Exactly!”

“And like… these are cabaret tables…. So, like… shouldn’t there be table service?”

“Yes!”

“Otherwise, what the hell is the point?” I say, getting rather worked up now. “They might as well just have normal seating down here.”

Helen laughs. “You sound like such a little reviewer now.”

“Well, I’ve seen a lot of theatres doing stuff well. It really fucking irritates me when they don’t.” I lean back in my chair. “And here they just treat you like livestock, moving the moving crowds from bar to seat, prodding anyone who gets out of line… You wouldn’t get that shitty attitude at Magic Mike.”

That’s sure enough. Say what you want about Magic Mike (and believe me, I’ve said a lot) you wouldn’t get staff like this at the Hippodrome. Not that I’m blaming the staff. It’s the management. But that doesn’t stop them from being rude.

And it’s not like it’s even Soho-cool rudeness, if such a thing even exists anymore.

This is not clever rudeness. Or snarky rudeness. Or amusing rudeness.

This is the rudeness of people who don’t care about the experience they are providing. The rudeness of people who think your ticket only buys you access to a show and nothing more. The rudeness of the overworked. The rudeness of the underpaid.

The rudeness of bad management.

“She could definitely have worded it better,” agrees Helen.

The house lights dim.

We’re beginning.

The cast come out. They’re wearing blue bodystockings. And they’re dancing.

And it’s hilarious.

I look over at Helen.

Earlier today I’d told her they’d referenced Twyla Tharp in their marketing copy. I don’t know what this is, but it is not Twyla Tharp.

But she’s smiling. She’s loving it too.

Thank gawd.

As the first number finishes and we are taken backstage into the dressing room where they begin preparations for the next act, I forget all about the dismal Soho staff and find myself lost in a world of sequins and female friendship. The type of friendship where every self-criticism is met by a chorus of personally offended “Nooooos.” Where compliments are used as punctuation. And grand proclamations of undying affection are given as standard.

It’s hard not to grin while watching these three.

They are clearly having so much fun, and we’ve been lucky enough to have been invited along for the ride.

With champagne flutes at the ready, they pour themselves glasses of glitter from wine glasses filled with the sparkly stuff. And I can’t think of a better metaphor for the Soho.

A dull, heavy, container, only rendered special by the dazzle and spark that lives inside. And without that? Well, it’s fit for nothing by bludgeoning someone over the head with.

“I am so happy right now,” I say to Helen as the house lights go up, following what must have been at least five fake-out curtain calls.

“I didn’t see any Twyla Tharp…” she says, but she’s smiling.

“I think they just picked a contemporary choreographer at random.”

“I think they must have.”

“But it was so joyful!”

“It was very joyful. But also real. I recognised everything that happened on stage.”

I nod in agreement. It did all feel very real. We’ve all had those friendships. Those conversations. Even if we weren’t in an award-winning comedy dance troupe. “The little one was totally Ellen,” I say, referring to our mutual friend.

“She was totally Ellen! Small. Brunette. Cute. And…”

“Pissy,” we both say at the same time.

“I think I’m the tall one,” says Helen. “I’m just vulnerable, you know?”

I look at her seriously. “You are loved and deserve validation,” I tell her. I pause. Something occurs to me. “Does that mean I’m Sunita?”

I don’t think I’m a Sunita. But I’m also not mad about being a Sunita.

“I loved Sunita,” says Helen.

I loved Sunita too. She was fabulous. Always with a make up brush in hand, stroking her cheeks… yeah, I’m a Sunita.

There’s a crash. The stage is already filled by people bringing down the set.

“They could have at least waited for us to leave,” says Helen as we get out from our table. But there’s no stopping them. They’re already pulling down the projection screen, lifting it down from the stage.

“We should go…” I say. And we traipse back up the stairs into the pink-filled foyer.

It’s going to be a long time before I’m back here.

Can’t say that I'm all that upset by that.

Well, not until they programme the next Philip Ridley.

Sweat-proof and transfer-resistant

More bag checks. It’s weird to think there was a time when this didn’t feel normal. That you could walk into a West End theatre without revealing on the embarrassing items that you tote around with you.

The bag checker on duty at the Gielgud clicks her little torch and peers inside the black depths of my rucksack. All good. The torch clicks off. “Mind the step and ticket collection is on the left,” she says all in one breath.

Right then. Better go left.

There’s a neat desk set into the wall over here. Which would seem like the perfect location for a box office. But the people at Gielgud Towers (or should I say Mackintosh House, home to Delfont Mackintosh, which is right next door) wouldn’t agree. Oh no. They have their ticket collection point on a small concession desk. The type where you’d expect to buy a programme, and maybe a bag of Minstrels.

But there's no bag of Minstrels here. Just tickets.

I join the queue and look around.

The Gielgud is a bit fancy, isn’t it? I mean, you kinda expect that from a theatre on Shaftsbury Avenue, but this one really is glowing.

There’s an oval-shaped mezzanine above the foyer, and people are up there, leaning on the balustrade to gaze down on all the newcomers, like sneaky angels perching on the edge of an oculus.

Small spotlights are placed strategically to make the gilded walls glow and shimmer. It’s all rather spectacular.

It is entirely the wrong place to watch SWEAT.

This tale of the American factory workers is much better suited to its original home at the Donmar Warehouse. I saw it there last year. One of the last productions I went to before going into marathon-mode. To be honest, I wasn’t overly impressed by it. Perhaps it was just suffering from being overhyped, but I thought it was just a whole pile of words, and I wasn’t that into it. I mean, it was fine. It’s not like I thought it was bad. Watchable, you know? But the Pulitzer prize win baffled me.

So, yeah. When the West End transfer was announced, I wasn’t all that enthused about going again. But I couldn’t get my act together early enough to book into Company, and I really didn’t want to get stuck in the mess of the Les Mis holding cell. So here we are. At SWEAT.

But I’m not mad at it. The theatre is nice. The seats are comfy. I can just lean back and maybe have a little nap.

I reach the front of the queue, give my name, and get my ticket. No fuss.

Right, where am I sitting?

Row A. Stalls.

Okay then. No napping for me. Martha Plimpton might notice. And if there’s one thing I don’t want to do, it’s offend Martha Plimpton. She scares me.

When Martha Plimpton asked me to get out of the way at Shakespeare in the Abbey, I got the fuck out of the way.

I better go in before she tells the ushers to keep an eye on me.

Hmm. Not sure where I’m going.

There’s a door to the stalls over here, just up these steps. But then there’s another one across the other way. Neither of them have numbers on them, and my ticket doesn’t have a left or a right on it.

I pick a door at random. Which basically means I select the one closest to me.

The ticket checker leans around his doorway and hands a single ticket stub to the front of houser standing guard at the staircase leading up to the circle.

“Here you go,” he says with a big grin.

That’s… odd. But perhaps she collects ticket stubs. If so, she’s sure in the right job.

He glances at my ticket and let’s me through. So, I guess my guess was guessed right.

Down some stairs with some frankly exhaustingly patterned carpet, and an equally enthused wallpaper. I slow down so that I can admire the posters. They’re properly old ones. From back when a typesetter was king. All text. No images.

Probably for the best, given that wallpaper.

Lots of John Gielgud shows, which I suppose makes sense.

There’s only so much lingering in stairwells you can do with only text-based posters to look at, and I make my way to the bottom and into the auditorium.

There’s a programme seller in here. Which reminds me. I have the programme from the Donmar run, because of course I do. I wonder what they’ve done differently.

I buy one. It’s £4. Which is an alright price. Almost a bargain.

Let’s see what’s in it.

I find my seat, in the front row, stuff my bag and jacket under the seat and settle in for a good peruse of the programme. There’s an article by Stephen Bush. That was in the Donmar programme. “Class hatred is Britain’s original sin.” Nice. What else? Another article! That’s what. It’s not often you get double articleage in the West End, I can tell you that for sure. This one’s by Jocelyn L. Buckner. “Blood, sweat and tears.” About how Lynn Nottage empowered the residents of Reading with their own story. That… that sounds familiar. I check the photo I snapped this morning. “Labor Negotiations: The Power of Community Forged Through Sweat.” By Jocelyn L. Buckner. Same article. But with a souped up West End title.

There's also a short piece about Les Mis, which we definitely didn't get at the Donmar. But it's all facts and figures and numbers and dates, and my god it's boring. I mean, come on, this is just glorified marketing copy. No one wants to read that. And I say that as someone who writes marketing copy for a living.

There seems to be rather a lot of that here. Marketing under the guise of editorial. There's a whole thing about Mary Poppins just a few pages further in. This is the kind of stuff I put in brochures. Not programmes. Oh well, I suppose we can just chalk 'em up as ads and move on.

“I haven’t got a programme,” says my neighbour. “Will you be offended if I don’t spend money on a programme?”

Well, actually I would rather… Oh, he isn’t talking to me.

Ah.

I mean, perhaps he got himself one during the Donmar run. That might explain it. You’d have to be pretty darn obsessed with programmes to buy the exact same content, just in a different format, with added advertising...

“It’s stunning!” says his companion.

I look critically at the programme. It’s alright, I guess. Not quite the slick sophistication of the white and red Donmar programmes, but it’s got a nice image on the front.

She stands up to look around the auditorium.

My neighbour twists around in his seat. “Yes,” he agrees. “A real Edwardian gem.”

Honestly, it’s like these people aren’t even interested in programmes.

“The set is very evocative and very realistic. I don't think it's for doing things with, a la our national theatre,” continues my neighbour. “I suppose the men from the factory could come down from the pulleys but I don't think it’s the kind of play.”

He’s right. It’s not that kind of play. No swinging from the chandelier here. Although I’d have a great view of it if any of the cast fancy getting a bit acrobatic.

Someone in theatre blacks comes along to adjust all the small microphones set on the front of the stage. We all shuffle out knees around so that he can get through, but really, there’s plenty of room. I can stretch my legs right out and my toes don’t even touch the stage. Benefits of front rowing, I suppose. I should really do this more often.

The house lights dim and Martha Plimpton’s lovely voice comes over the sound system, telling us to switch off our phones. I’ve already put my phone away, but I get it out to double check that, yes, my phone is on airplane mode, and yes, it’s on silent too. Ain’t no buzzing going to interrupt Martha Plimpton’s flow. Not today.

Except, it’s not Martha Plimpton who comes out on stage.

It’s a man with tattoos. On his face. Nazi tattoos. On his face.

A man sitting really fucking close to me. With Nazi tattoos. On his face.

Shit. I’d forgotten about this.

I’m surprised about how uncomfortable it is. To be sitting so close to a man with Nazi tattoos. On his face. I know it’s not real. I know it’s just makeup. But I can’t help but think about the poor actor having to apply all that every day. And the momentary panic he must have every time they don’t wash off quite as quickly as they should.

But it’s only a framing device.

Soon enough, dust sheets are being pulled away, bits of set lowered from the rafters, and we're in a bar, and there's Martha Plimpton, dancing away. I think she might be a bit drunk.

At the Donmar, I was stuck right at the back of the circle. Watching the play from above. Here, well, I have quite the opposite angle. I can see right under the tables. I can even count all the bits of chewing gum stuck underneath.

And oh my lord, what a difference sitting close makes. I'm not going to start claiming that I believe in the second coming of SWEAT. But you know, it's good. I'm enjoying it.

And when Sebastián Capitán Viveros's Oscar flips over each of the tables in turn, and chisels off the chewing gum, I get a certain satisfaction seeing them turned back again, all clean and gum-free. Almost as if I'd hacked away at the white globs myself.

And when the fight scene comes, well, I find myself leaning as far back as I can, convinced that someone's going to come flying off the stage, legs and arms flailing, and quite possibly knock my nose off on their way down.

It doesn't help that it's a pretty fucking intense fight scene.

The audience audibly winces as Oscar takes a wallop to the stomach. A soft hiss of air escaping from between the audience members' teeth as he goes down.

Oof. That reqlly doesn't look good, mate.

Play over, I feel like I've been released. And not just because it was over two and a half hours.

I was pinned down for far too long. Pushed back into my chair with that heady stream of words.

I can see why people like sitting in the front row. But it's a bit too much for me. Too real. Too present. Too vulnerable-making.

And, let's be real. If a play is so intimate that it requires sitting in the front row in order to really feel it? Eh... I mean, perhaps a traditional theatre isn't the right place for it.

Anyway, another theatre checked off the list. Gielgud is done. And at least I don't have to debate with myself whether the staged theatrical concert version of Les Mis that's coming in next counts as theatre or not.

But you always knew that you'd be the one that work while they all play

"Can I check your bag?" asks the bag checker.

You sure can, my good man.

I open the zip to expose my fresh haul of cough sweets and hayfever tablets. Let me tell you, I am having a swell time this summer. With the itchy eyes and runny nose to add to that neverending cough of mine, I sure am the ideal theatre-goer at the moment. And I'm carrying it off so well. Really, I've never looked better. I've always though watery eyes were a hard look to pull off but I think I'm making it work.

He doesn't flinch.

Perhaps three bags of bright yellow cough sweets aren't the weirdest thing he's come across lately.

Search complete, he steps back and lets me through.

The foyer in the Leicester Square Theatre is tiny. A metre square, if that. With a proper hole-in-the-wall box office. My favourite kind.

There are already two people ahead of me in the queue. So I hang back, lest we end up getting a touch too cosy for so early in the evening.

"What's the name?" the lady behind the window asks.

"Err," he says, with a pause that goes on way too long for that kind of question. "The initials are KJ? I don't really want to say."

Blimey. Either he has a really dodgy name, or there's a new papering club that I haven't heard of.

Oh, yeah. I should probably say. I don't use any of those theatre ticket clubs for my marathon. Not because I don't want to, you understand. But because I'm not allowed to. Nothing to do with the blog. It's my job, you see. Can't become a member if you work in the industry. I mean, I suppose I could lie. But I'm kinda on record of working for a venue, so, yeah, that's out.

Anyway, good luck to this man and his ticket acquisition skills. And no shade meant to any venue or show that needs to fill a few seats. We've all done it. Trust me.

Mr KJ gets his tickets and moves on. My turn.

Now, I have a perfectly normal surname, so I just give that, and after confirming my first name, get my ticket.

After that, I go down the stairs. The walls are a deep, dark red. Which seems to me to be entirely the wrong colour to paint the walls of a stairwell that takes you down into a basement. But perhaps that's just because I'm watching Stranger Things at the moment. I’m primed to see monsters lurking behind every corner.

And it's not that scary down here. Yes, the walls are still red. But there's a massive concession counter taking up one wall. And things can't be scary when there are sweets on sale. I mean yes, Hansel and Gretel. But that witch wasn't selling and those kids were just little arseholes.

Anyway, there's a ticket checker on the door here.

"You're through this door," he says, pointing at the one just next to us. "There are bars inside."

"Thanks!"

"You're welcome," he says, handing my ticket back.

Aww. So polite. Bet he never stole gingerbread from an old lady.

Down a few more steps and I'm in the theatre. It's larger than I expected. All on one level. With a high stage. Which is a good thing, as when I sit down I discover that the rake is really terrible.

Without the benefit of anything happening on stage, all I have is a bloody good view of the backs of all the heads of the people sitting in front of me. Bent down as they read their programmes.

Hang on. Why don't I have a programme?

I look around. There aren't any programme sellers anywhere.

Perhaps I missed them at the concessions desk.

There are bars though. Two of them. One either side of the auditorium.

And both of them are branded up. With the name of the show emblazoned on the wall, and the merch covering every surface.

Right then.

"Hi, is there a programme?" I ask the bloke behind the bar.

He looks at me with confusion. Behind his head, draped across the back shelves are Sh!t-Faced Shakespeare t-shirts. Sh!t-Faced Shakespeare tote bags. And Sh!t-Faced Shakespeare hoodies. Surely it isn't too much to ask for a Sh!t-Faced Shakespeare programme?

"Err," he says. "They should be on the seats?"

"Umm?"

"Are they not?"

I turned around to look back at my row. If there are programmes, they must be Sh!t-Faced Shakespeare invisible. "No?"

He reaches under the bar and pulls one out.

Honestly. Good thing I asked.

As I return to my seat I notice that all the front rows have the things balanced on the armrests but my row? Nothing. Programme-less and empty.

We're being denied programmes just because we sit at the back of the theatre. As if we don't enjoy a good programme just because we are last-minute ticket buyers. Which is very untrue. There is no one in the world who loves programmes more than me.

To tell you the truth, I'm a little offended.

Especially because these are like, super nice programmes. They’re shiny. Very shiny. So shiny the words “wipe clean” pop up in my head and refuses to go away.

I decide very firmly not to think about the significance of that.

Instead I turn to the contents. My favourite thing in the whole world is when programmes reflect the show they're made for. And if this programme is anything to go by, Sh!t-Faced Shakespeare is going to be full of drunk humour and dirty uncle jokes.

They even have the grown-up equivalent of when you add “Earth, The Milky Way, The UNIVERSE” to the end of your address when you're a kid - providing carrier pigeons coordinates to their contact us details. Coordiantes which, according to Google, are in a wind farm off Herne Bay... I may have typed it in wrong.

Let's try again.

51°44'26.67"N 1°13'52.35"W

Oxford.

Okay, that sounds much more likely. Drunk Shakespeare. Yup, sounds like Oxford to me.

Shame though. Rather liked the idea of them all getting pissed in an off-shore wind farm.

"Hello! Are you looking forward to this evening?"

I look around. There is a woman with the most extraordinary glittery eyeshadow standing in the row behind me. She's wearing a top hat and tails. Oh my...

"Oh, yeah," I say, as the only appropriate answer when asked this question by someone wearing sequins on their eyelids.

"Is this your first time here?"

I admit it is. As someone who likes neither Shakespeare, nor drunk people, Sh!t-Faced Shakespeare is not a show that I would naturally gravitate towards.

"How did you hear about it, if you don't mind me asking?"

Oh… Am I doing this? Fuck it, yes I am.

"It's a bit of a strange one," I say. "I'm doing this challenge..."

And I tell her, all about this fucking marathon of mine.

Her eyes widen and her expression turns into what I like to think of as The Marathon Face. Slightly shocked, but mainly fighting between the twin emotions of horror and amusement. A kind of: oh god, who is this crazy person, and how can I get away from them, but also, can I get that URL?

"That's..."

"Yeah."

"How did you think of that?" she asks, leaning back against the chairs as she tries to take this information in.

I give her my potted answer. Had the idea a few years back... yadda yadda yadda. You've heard it.

"So, how many have you done?"

"160. Ish." The truth is I've forgotten. It's somewhere around there.

"And how many are there?"

"About 300." Yeah. About. I don't know the answer to that one either. In my defence though, it keeps on changing. Do you remember back when I started, and my original count was 231 theatres? Those were good times.

"Are you getting deals? Because that must cost a lot!"

"Yeah..." I sigh and tell her about press tickets and all that shit. I may not have access to papering clubs, but I have contacts... Not that I even have time to use any of them anymore. It takes... so long. Like seriously. It's so much effort. All that back and forth and negotiating dates and ergh... I don't... I just can't...

Still slightly baffled she heads off, probably feeling a lot more content with the way her own life is going. My marathon tends to have that effect on people.

I go back to the programme. And yup. There she is. Natalie Boakye. Favourite drink: Processo Rose apparently. And the worst thing she's done while drunk? "Thrown up in my hands, in a club, before midnight on NYE."

I try to think what's the worst thing I've ever done while drunk. Sitting my Chemistry A-level was always my go-to answer on this one. But I think we have a new winner now: going to Magic Mike Live.

I won't be forgetting that in a hurry.

"Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. This evening’s performance will commence in two minutes," comes a voice over the sound system. I don't think I need to tell you who that voice belongs to. "May I remind you that any recording if this performance is strictly prohibited. Anyone caught going this may be asked to leave the building."

Wow, intense. I'm glad I've got all my auditorium photos done already. I don't want another Mountview situation.

Two minutes later, my top-hatted friend is up on stage, her sparkly eyes flashing as she whips up the audience.

"Cheer if it's your a first time," she shouts. The newbies duly cheer. Yes, including me. I can't let my new friend down now, can I?

"And if you've been here before..." She puts her hands up in twin claws and the Sh!t-faced Sycophants growl in response.

She explains the concept. One actor in the company has spent the past four hours getting drunk. With the finesse of a magician's assistant, she whips back a cloth and shows us what they've had.

A bottle of vodka.

I mean, okay. That's a lot. But sitting there, alone on the little trolley, it doesn't look all that impressive.

But never fear. There's more.

She brings out a bugle. "Who wants to have a go blowing on my horn?"

Someone in the front row volunteers. He isn't very good at it.

"Don't worry, you've got an hour to practice," she says.

Hopefully it won't take an hour, because that horn needs to get blown as soon as our drunk actor starts to sober up. On the sound of the horn, they get given another drink to down.

Next up, a gong. That goes to an audience member down the other end. Same rules.

Then there’s the bucket. A very large bucket. The sort they'd use for laundry in a bleak drama set in a mining town.

I don’t want to think about the bucket.

Not the wipe-cleaness of the programmes.

But just in case, our host has her own weapons. Which she'll bring out if the actor is either too sober, or... too far gone.

She runs off, giving way to the cast and... is that... is that Imagine Dragons? A... a slightly medieval sounding version of Imagine Dragons? It is! It's Believer! And the reason I know this (and I swear, if you tell anyone this, it'll be the end of you) is because I actually really like Imagine Dragons. Yeah, yeah. I know. They don't really mesh with the whole... whatever I've got going on, But look, some days I just need more from my tunes than Amaranthe can deliver. And Imagine Dragons does the business. Now you, shut up or I'll start commenting on what you have on your Spotify playlist.

Anyway, those banging beats done, we're off. Hamlet. With Hamlet himself played by David Ellis in a post a bottle of vodka capacity.

It doesn't take long for that bottle of vodka to make itself known, and Ellis is soon sucking Saul Marron's finger and making incest jokes with Claudius.

"We need a Polonius!"

Oh yeah. They don't have one of those. Turns out even when you cut down Hamlet to an hour and change, you still need a Polonius.

The audience is called open to provide, and a brave soul is brought on stage and given a hat to wear.

"Can you remind us what your first name is?" they ask him, in possibly the cruellest move that has ever happened on stage.

"Err, yes?" says the newly hatted Polonius, probably having GCSE English Lit flashbacks right now.

"Yes? Ah! The old Dutch name, Yaass," says Madeleine Schofield's Gertrude.

He's soon dismissed back to his seat, to enjoy an evening of Hamlet newly set in Broad City.

A few minutes later, the bugle sounds. Or at least, there's a spluttering whisper which I can only take to be an attempt on the instrument.

"You thought this was going too smoothly?" Ellis asks the bugle-player, and Boakye comes back onstage to pour out a bottle of beer and hand the pint to our Hamlet.

Ellis takes a break in drinking to tell us that when he's not being an actor, he works in a restaurant, and he just got fired tired.

Someone awws in the audience and he points in their general direction. "Someone went there. Thank you."

When we get to that speech, you know the one. The speech. The soliloquy. It's taken as a run-up and collapses into laughter halfway through the first line. We all hold our breaths as Ellis attempts to force the rest out in a single stream, and the relief when he gets to the end is released in a massive cheer.

The gong goes.

More beer!

Ellis wanders on and off stage, the pint glass in hand. Even when he's in the wings he manages to distract his fellow actors, as they react to his off-stage antics.

Boakye keeps a close eye on him. Replacing his dagger with a stuffed snake ("Nagini!") so he can't hurt himself, or anyone else. Although to be fair, he does his best. Even chucking the poor creature in the direction of the front row.

As for Yorrick, Ellis picks something out of the skulls eyesocket. "Sorry," he tells Beth-Louise Priestley's Horatia. "I stuck some chewing gum in there earlier."

But no amount of picking can save the ill-fated Ophelia. Or what's left of her anyway.

When her shrouded body is carried out on stage, Ellis makes a grab for it. "She's light as a feather," he announces. "But not stiff as a board." And with that, he lobs the corpse into the audience.

"No!" says Boakye. "No throwing things."

Ellis looks suitably contrite.

He still can't be trusted with a sword though. As Ellis and Matthew Seager's Laertes prepare to fight, Boakye runs on stage to grab the weapons, returning a second later with a pair of inflatables.

"I've got a stiff banana," yells Ellis as he attacks Seager with it.

Well, quite.

After that, it's only a matter of time before everyone is dead.

And as the cast all stick their middle fingers up at the audience, we get some more Imagine Dragons to play us out.

Ah, fuck yeah. It's Warrior. Yasss. I mean, yes!

What a fucking tune.

... Just don't fucking quote me on that.

The Safe Word is Unicorn

You’ve read the Exeunt review of Magic Mike Live. We’ve all read the Exeunt review of Magic Mike Live. The tears. The drama. The fist-pump to female empowerment. A battle cry for female desire. It was an unmissable read.

I can tell you right now, that’s not what you’ll be getting here.

Because I do not want to go to Magic Mike Live.

Let me say that again, just so that we’re really clear: I do not, under any circumstances, want to go to Magic Mike Live.

The fact that I have to go to Magic Mike Live, in order to check off the theatre that lurks within the Leicester Square monolith that is the Hippodrome Casino, is something that has been giving me a great deal of stress over the past six months.

And it’s not because I’m a prude.

The fact that I’m a prude has nothing to do with it.

“I would honestly rather go to a real strip club,” I tell Helen and Ellen, as we do our best to get very, very drunk, somewhere below street level in Soho. (“Pre-loading,” Helen calls it).

“Really?” Helen is baffled by this. She’s looking forward to the show. Or rather, she’s looking forward to me not enjoying the show. “Why?”

“Because in a strip club, you are the one in power. You can tell the dancers to go away without feeling that you’re ruining things. It’s a one-on-one transaction. Not part of this, whole… thing.” I wave my hands about to demonstrate the scale of the… thing. One drink down and I’m already getting expansive. This place doesn’t mess around with their measures.

Earlier today I’d done something I’d never done before.

I told Twitter where I was going to be tonight.

I’ve always been very careful not to do that. Stalkers be scary, you know.

But I’m not worried about that anymore. If anything, I was courting that danger. Encouraging it. Asking for it. “Bring your arsenic and find me in Soho,” I told my followers.

A jokey “kill me,” that was only half a joke.

I really don’t want to go to Magic Mike Live.

A co-worker of mine went last week. She loved it.

“They’re really good dancers,” she said excitedly the next morning.

That’s quite a statement coming from someone who works at one of the most famous dance-houses in the world.

“But is there…” I pause, not wanting to use the word grinding, but not being able to come up with a suitable alternative. “Audience interaction?”

Yeah, okay. This is the real issue. Some rando stranger grinding on me is not something I want. If it were, I would go to a club, and you know what, I'd probably get a free drink into the bargain.

“Oh yeah. Where are you sitting?”

“In the balcony.”

“You won’t be taken on stage then.”

Thank fuck. “So, I’m safe then?”

She laughs at that. “No. They will find you!”

“Oh…” Oh fuck… “I think I’m going to have to get really drunk.”

Half way through the second drink and my head is starting to spin. Whatever the fuck they put in these cocktails is working. Every time I turn my head, I feel like I’m leaving my thoughts behind. That’s good, I tell myself. A couple more sips and I’ll be in a full on dissociative state. Just what I need to get through the next few hours.

It’s time to go.

We stagger back up to the street and start walking down to Leicester Square.

Helen and Ellen are all in a rush, though I keep on saying we have plenty of time.

Helen dives across Shaftesbury Avenue. Right across the road.

I jog behind with a squeal of “we’re going to dieeee,” before remembering that getting hit by a car was a great excuse for not going to see Magic Mike Live tonight. No luck though.

I point out the casino, but really there’s no need. Even from the back, it does rather loom.

There’s a kind of mural thing going on here. All lights and images and I’m not really able to focus on the presise nature of it, but I feel I should take a photo anyway.

“Sorry,” says a bloke, who on seeing me taking a photo of the wall display thing decides he also wants in on the action.

“Don’t worry, I’m done.”

“You also seeing the show?”

“Yes,” I say, in the tones of someone saying they’re just about to sit their Chemistry A-level.

“We are too!” He sounds super-duper excited about the whole thing.

“Are you looking forward to it?”

“Oh yeah. Aren’t you?”

“Not really.”

“Ah. Well, see you in there!” he says with a cheery goodbye.

I have really got to get my shit sorted. Me not having a good night is fine. I mean, it’s not fine. But it’s fine.

However, me being the cause of someone else not having a good night… well, that’s taking the whole marathon thing too far, isn’t it?

In a move of openness that must have the Royal Opera House nashing their teeth, the box office is fully open to the street.

I stop, the cogs in my brain slowed by the excess alcohol.

“Do we go in here, or…?”

A man on the door sees my confusion and steps in. “Are you picking up your tickets?” he asks.

I nod. “Yeah.”

He waves me through and we join the queue.

There’s a man leaning on the counter and as I give my name to the lady at box office he starts rummaging in a Magic Mike Live branded gift bag.

“How many of you are there?” he asks.

“Three.”

He pulls out three envelopes. “Unfortunately a few of our cast members have a bug and won’t be performing,” he says. “There’s a drinks voucher in here, and a letter. We’d like you to come back and see the show properly, for free of course, as long as you promise to buy lots of drinks.”

Gosh, well. Okay. We take the envelopes, and our tickets, and join the queue to get in.

There's a red carpet.

A young woman stands on the door. She has a stack of envelopes in her hand.

“We should put our letters away,” I hiss at the other two. “Might get another one!”

Ellen gives me a look. I don’t think she’s ever seen me this drunk before.

“Max, are you leaning against the wall?” she asks.

I may be leaning against the wall. Hard to tell. It keeps on moving.

She gives me another look, but puts away her envelope all the same.

“Hi ladies!” says the young woman on the door. “A few of our cast members are off sick. The others will still be going on, and it’s the same show, exactly the same length. But we’d like to offer you’re the chance to come back and see it as it should be seen. For free of course,” she says, counting out more envelopes for us.

We now have two envelopes each.

Score.

If the bag checker notices this excess of envelopes he doesn’t say anything.

He does pick up on Helen’s water bottle though.

“It’s water!” she protests, but it’s no good. She has to go outside and down the whole thing.

“It’s very fancy in here,” I say, noting the old mirror with the Hippodrome’s name faded on the glass and the chandelier handing overhead. “Watch out if you don’t want to be in the photo.” Ellen jumps out the way.

“I’m very well hydrated,” Helen says on her return, and as the bag checker wishes us a good evening, we head up the stairs.

The stairs take us up straight to the loos. The Hippodrome clearly know their audience.

“It’s a ninety minute show, ladies,” says an usher. “Toilets are here and down there.”

I hang around, people watching as Helen and Ellen partake of the facilities. Everyone is dressed really fancy. Like, really fancy. Not just going out fancy. But going out out fancy. Hotpants and sequins and satin and tiny mini dresses.

I look down at my own efforts. A black dress. Vivienne Westwood. It’s really nice. But not nearly showy enough. I consider opening another button for added cleavage, but my fingers are all fumbly and I don’t think I can manage it. The mourning brooch pinned to my lapel was probably also a mistake. As were the stompy boots. Although considering my wall-leaning, perhaps its best I didn’t attempt heels.

Plus, I doubt any of these women just came from church.

“They have so adapted this place for women,” says Helen on her return. “There are urinals in the ladies’ loos. They must have transferred them over. Although you know what Caroline Criado Perez said about unisex loos?”

I do know what she says about unisex looks. “Only men use unisex loos with urinals. But they also use the ones that don’t have urinals. So, there’s even longer queues for the ones without urinals than if they were just ladies’ and gents’. Wait…” I stop. “Are we seriously having feminist discourse outside the loos at Magic Mike?”

“Oh, look, a hen party,” says Ellen, bringing the tone right back to where it needs to me.

The Hen, in her shiny satin sash, looks over and gives us a big grin, and we all grin back.

We go to the bar.

A girl walks past with a massive fishbowl of a drink.

“Wow,” says Ellen, gapping at the drink.

The girl laughs. “They just told me it’s a ninety minute show without a break,” she says with a shrug of resignation.

There are screens all over the place, warning us to take our seats because the show is about to start. I check my phone. There’s still ten whole minutes. I mean, I get that moving hundreds of drunk women into their seats might be tricky, but ten minutes!

“Hello ladies, are you seeing the show tonight?”

“Yup!” says Ellen, looking up from the drinks menu.

“Well, the show’s about to start, so you should probably take your seats. You can order your drinks from there. Don’t worry, it’s exactly the same menu, same choice, same everything.”

“Oh, okay then!”

“Can I see your tickets?”

I hand them over and he points us in the right direction, but a second later, we’re lost, having gone up a flight of stairs that we should not have gone up.

“I’m going to get a programme,” I say, spotting a merch desk on our way back down.

I glance over at the price list, kinda squinting as I do so because I don’t want to know. Ten pounds? Fifteen? Twenty probably.

“That’s seven pounds, please,” says the woman behind the desk.

Oh. “Oh!”

Well, I mean, it’s hardly bargain of the century, but selling a programme for only seven pounds to an audience who are probably drunk enough to empty out their purses on the counter…. well, that is some Saint Simeon Stylites levels of ascetic restraint right there. Hang on, did I just say the word ascetic? Fucking hell, I must really be drunk right now. I’m not sure I even know how to spell that when sober. Or pronounce it. Wait, what’s going on?

“Are you taking pictures of the merch, Helen?” I ask, spotting Helen kneeling on the ground in front of the glass display.

“Just of the underpants.”

Well, that’s alright then.

“I don’t want one, but how much are these?” she asks, now back on her feet and poking through a bowl of temporary tattoos.

“Five pounds,” says the merch lady. Very patiently.

“We should probably go in…” I suggest.

We find the door. There are two ticket checkers. Both men.

“There are a lot of men working here,” I say, looking around. “Almost all men.”

Yes, there was the young woman on the main door. And the one at the merch desk. But everywhere else: bloke, bloke, bloke, bloke, bloke.

“And they’re all so nice!” says Ellen. “Like the guy who told us to go to our seats. He could have just said it, but he made the effort to tell us we could order drinks in there.”

Helen is nodding away enthusiastically. “And it’s not just nice it’s…”

“Gentlemanly,” I say.

“Yes!”

“And like, not sleazy. At all.”

There’s more enthusiastic nodding from the pair of them as we get to the front of the queue.

“I’m just going to put this stamp on your hand,” says one of the ticket checkers, with the air of a paediatric nurse telling their young charge not to worry about the needle. It really won’t hurt.

“It’s a unicorn!” says Ellen, examining her new hand print.

I look at mine. I have to twist my arm in a very unnatural way to see it properly. It is a unicorn!

“Oh dear… it’s really small in here,” says Ellen as we go into the auditorium. She doesn’t sound overly happy about that. She’s not a fan of intimate theatre. Even when the performers are fully clothed.

“Hang on ladies, I’ll be right with you,” says yet another (male) usher.

We hang around as he seats another group.

“Oh god…” I say to the world in general.

“I know!” says a woman right back. “I’m dreading this. I keep on thinking about all the failed decisions in my life that brought me up to this point…”

I nod along sympathetically. Me too, love. Me fucking too.

A minute later, our usher is back. He bounds over with a grin, executing a neat spin as he approaches us.

“You alright?”

“Yeah!” I say, very much impressed by the spin. I show him the tickets and he points out our seats.

Front row.

Oh.

I remember booking these. Vaguely.

“You’re over here. One, two, three,” he says, counting out the seats. “Wait, hang on,” he says as I make off. “Just some things I need to tell you first.” And he launches into a short speech. We’re allowed to take photos. But we need to keep the cameras close to us. He demonstrates, holding an imaginary phone close to his chest. “No leaning on the railing. The dancers will be moving around everywhere. So keep your drinks close, and your bags under your seat.”

And with that, we’re released.

The seats are wide and comfy. And there’s plenty of leg room.

The leg room is worrying me. As is the glass platform that is running around the outside of the balcony.

The lights go down.

A roar goes up from the audience. A blast of pure animal noise.

A male MC in a blue suit comes out on stage and starts stirring up the crowd.

A front of houser comes over with a drinks menu.

He crouches down and lean in as Helen and Ellen order.

“What do you want?” asks Ellen, handing me the menu.

I stare at it, but can’t make anything out. Is this even in English? It’s all just swirly lines on a page.

I hand it back. “It’s okay,” I say. “I don’t want anything.”

“Are you sure?” asks Ellen.

“Err.”

“It free,” Helen reminds me.

“Shit, err…” but it’s no good. It’s too dark. And too loud. I can’t focus. “What are you having?”

Ellen says something but it sounds like nonsense string of syllables.

“That sounds good,” I say. I trust Ellen’s drinks order than I do my own sense right now.

The MC has gone out into the stalls. He’s talking to an audience member.

A dancer comes over.

Oh, god. He’s grinding on her. The grinding has started.

This is so unpleasant.

The MC asks if she’s wet.

I am so grossed out right now.

She says no, but that answer just earns her a trip on stage where a dancer dressed as a firefighter pulls out a hose from his trousers. It squirts.

No euphemism intended on my part. That’s all on them.

The woman looks down out her outfit. Covered in a pink mess.

“Stop!” she shouts.

The dancer stops.

We all stop.

Lights change. A disembodied voice comes over the speakers.

Who is that?

Channing Tatum?

What the fuck is going on?

The audience member is outraged. This isn’t what she wants. Male MCs asking if she’s moist, and dancers throwing around double entendres. And she’s not having it.

A microphone descends from the rig.

She’s taking over.

Ellen leans into me. “I don’t know what’s real anymore.”

Nor do I.

Nor. Do. I.

But it looks like we’re under a new regime. The girls are taking over.

She wants the firefighter costume off. He duly obliges, throwing it into the audience and revealing a crisp white t-shirt and nice pair of jeans underneath.

Blimey, that’s… well, that’s much better.

“He’s kinda hot,” says Helen.

I nod. He is kinda hot.

And so it begins.

Our new MC introduces the dancers. We have a CEO. A man holding a baby (not our baby, she is quick to clarify. That’s not part of the fantasy going on here). The boy next door.

The audience duly roars with every new revelation.

The dancers strut their stuff in routines that seem mainly made up of lighting changes. But even in my sodden state I can see that they’re not bad. These guys can dance.

And they don’t stay still.

A minute on stage, and they are off, prowling around the audience, shifting seats around to give themselves room to show off their moves.

Our drinks arrive.

Mine is very pink. It has a straw.

I give it a sip.

It seems to be primarily made up of sugar, with the merest dash of alcohol.

“It’s very sweet,” says Ellen. She puts her’s down under her chair.

I carry on drinking.

Helen tries to say something to me, but I can’t hear her. A second later she’s showing me her phone. “The way you look next to them…” it says. She points at the girls sitting next to me.

They’re screaming. Properly screaming. And bouncing around in their seats.

They are very drunk.

Drunker than me.

Drunker than I have ever been in my life.

I don’t think it would be physically possible for me to get that drunk. The world would run out of alcohol before that happened.

As dancers gyrate their way around the glass platform, the girls scream at them, wave at them, reach for them.

They are so happy.

And all the while, young men in smart shirts and red aprons dart between the rows, taking orders and bringing drinks.

I catch Helen looking at me again. “You’re watching the audience, not the stage!” she shouts over the music.

“I’m here as a professional,” I shout back. But she’s right. I am watching the audience. It’s fascinating stuff. Seeing the excitement. The enjoyment. The letting go.

A rope descends from the rig just in front of us. I nudge Ellen and point at it.

We raise our eyebrows at each other.

Looks like we’re going to get some aerial work going on.

Someone appears next to our row.

He’s not a dancer. He’s a stage manager or something.

He grabs the rope and starts tightening knots and getting it ready and… gosh, he’s very attractive.

Fuck. No. Stop Maxine. Don’t do that. Don’t perv on the poor stage managers, who are just trying to do their jobs.

Honestly, it is so on brand of me to go to a strip show and end up getting a crush on one of the backstage team.

I look back at the stage.

The dancers are doing their very utmost. Shirts are coming off. Abs revealed. All very impressive.

And our MC is keeping them under strict control.

A dancer rubs her shoulders before moving down to her feet.

“I don’t need my foot rubbed,” she snaps back. “I’m trying to do a show here. What about her?” She points at a woman in the front row, and the dancer trots over as bidden, sits on the edge of the stage, and holds out his hand, ready to receive the audience member’s foot.

She needs a little encouragement from our MC, but soon enough, her sandled foot is getting a rub down.

Our MC has found herself a prodigy. A young neophyte she wishes to mold into the perfect man.

“What’s the most important thing when dealing with a woman?” she asks him.

There’s a pause as he considers the answer. He leans in, speaking into her microphone. “Permission,” he whispers.

The effect is electric. The room almost bursts as 300 women levitate from their seats at that word.

The MC decides what we need is a safe word. “Unicorn,” she decides. If anything happens that we don’t want to be happening, just say unicorn “and they will listen!” she promises.

Women are starting to come up on stage. They get picked up, danced over, and gyrated against.

A few of them cover their faces with their hands not knowing what to do with their faces as they get lain back on tables and danced on top of.

“Look, they’re sweeping!” says Ellen, pointing back at the stage where yes, a few stage hands have run on to clean things up while we were all distracted.

My neighbour flaps her hand in front of me. “Look! Look!” she says in my ear. “He's coming up!”

I look. One of the dancers is climbing up to the balcony.

“Have you ever had a boyfriend, or a partner,” says our MC, “sing you your favourite song?”

The dancers come back out, this time with instruments.

Helen jumps in her seat. “This is my favourite song,” she shouts and laughs, unable to keep her joy contained.

I can’t tell you what Helen’s favourite song is. I don’t know it. I haven’t recognised any of the music tonight come to think of it.

But I seem to be the only one because everyone is having great fun singing along.

I sit back and decide to wait until they bring out Marilyn Manson’s greatest hits.

A dancer comes out with an arm full of roses and starts handing them out, even lobbing a few into the balcony.

Helen catches one.

She's doing really well tonight.

And then it comes. The bit I’d been dreading.

“You’ve all had hard days,” says our MC. “You should get a lapdance! Just remember. The safe word is unicorn. Say it if you need to and the dancers will listen.”

“They are working fast,” I say, watching as the dancer assigned to the balcony moves and grinds his way along the front row, not spending more than a few seconds on each person.

He pauses a few times, to push back hair and whisper in ears, but never for long. There are a lot of people to get through.

Finishing the end of the row, he crosses the aisle and dives into the row behind us. From there he goes to the other end of our section, working on one woman then leaving again.

“It’s beginning to feel a bit pointed,” says Ellen, not sounding overly disappointed at not getting a dancer thrusting at her.

But that’s not it. I’ve noticed something. It’s been happening all night.

They’re reading the room. The dancers. Or at least someone who is telling the dancers.

Girls wearing shorts were lain down on stage. Ones wearing trousers had their legs lifted in the air. Larger girls where presented with dancers to feel up. Smaller ones were lifted around.

And those three woman sitting in the balcony who weren’t on the feet, dancing around with everyone else? Yeah, someone noticed that they weren’t totally into it. And they made sure that they didn’t need to unicorn their way out of anything.

Down in the stalls, a woman has spilt her drink. One of the red aproned front of housers runs over with a roll of paper towels. He spins out reams of the stuff. Feet of it. Metres. Making a spectacle of the paper towels flying around as he cleans up the table for her.

And I want to laugh, because that’s it, isn’t it? That’s how you look after an audience. Not just one composed of drunk women. Any audience. You look after them. Make them feel cared for. And safe. And give them an out. Just in case they need it.

“It had the kind of camaraderie you find in night club bathrooms,” says Ellen as we try to find our way out. “Girls lending each other their mascara, you know?”

“That was an amazing feeling,” says Helen, inspecting her rose. “Like, the audience is the most important part of a show. You can’t have one without them. But to feel it… to have the experience focused on you…”

Yup.

The show isn’t for me. I didn’t expect for it to be.

But what I expected it to be was awful.

And it wasn't that either.

It was all perfectly fine.

In a week when I have been thinking so much about audience consent, from the assault on audiences at 10,000 Gestures, to the warning-laden A Web in the Heart earlier today, Magic Mike Live feels like a shining example of how to treat them. And yes, Boris Charmatz fans may point out that the results here are hardly art. And the extreme behaviour of his dancers served some higher purpose. But in 2019, as the world goes to shit, perhaps what we need, what we all need, is not some choreographer’s intellectual fantasy, but reasonably priced programmes, ushers who actively want their guests to have a good time, and a safe word to arm ourselves with.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to concentrate very hard on not throwing up as I try to find the night bus home.

The worst theatre companion in London

"I was going to stand across the street and yell 'Soup' at you," were Weez's first words after bounding up to me outside the Noel Coward theatre.

It may surprise you to learn that this isn't the first time I've heard that.

I haven't gone by Soup in years, but that's the thing with people you first met on the Twitter. Old habits die hard. And old usernames die harder.

Which is why I should probably start called Weez Janet. Because that's her name.

"I bought something on the way over," continued Weez, I mean Janet, bringing out a small card box.

"What is that?" I asked as a small golden pastry emerged.

"Pastel de Nata. Want one?"

Holy shit balls, yes. I really did.

The box containing the remaining pastry duly handed over, we headed inside.

I was feeling pretty pleased with myself as I had already collected the tickets. I was going to be such a good theatre companion that night. Attentive. Charming. Erudite...

"I need to buy a programme," I suddenly announced in the foyer. Shit.

Well, okay. I could be attentive, charming, and erudite a little bit later. Once all the marathon-relayed housekeeping was out of the way, I'd be able to relax, I told myself. Then all the amusing anecdotes that I was sure I definitely had, would present themselves to me. Something witty about Ivo Van Hove. Or a pun on the title of the play… I couldn’t think of one (and still can’t…) but it was only a matter of time.

"That's £4.50," said the programme seller. I stared at her. Then at the notes in my hand.

"It's the green one," whispered Janet.

Ah. Yes. The green one. 

I handed it over.

"I'm so used to programmes being five pounds," I explained to Janet as we made our way upstairs. "Her asking for not five pounds kinda threw me."

"That whole fifty pence..."

"I couldn't work out if it was more or less. I literally don't have enough brain space for that kind of maths anymore."

Clearly erudite wasn't on the cards for that evening.

Instead we headed to the bar.

"Actually I need the loo," said Janet.

"Okay, you do that and I'll find a spot for us here," I said, turning a circle in the packed bar and seeing a complete lack of spots.

Seats in the bar were not a thing that was accessible that evening.

Loos weren't either, it seemed.

"The door is blocked by two blokes," said Janet returning a moment later. "But there is a ladies down off the foyer."

We retreated back to the foyer.

Oh god, look what a monster this marathon has turned me into... commenting on the most human of needs of my theatre companions.

I even felt duty bound to ask Janet about the facilities as soon as she emerged.

"Nice? Clean?" I asked, already hating myself.

They were both those things.

"But what about the window looking out onto the street?"

Through the door I had spotted the arched windows that lurked behind the row of sinks. Covered by a thin sheet, there was at least the suggestion of privacy. But still, that's not what you want when you're washing your hands.

Our trip to the toilets now complete, I realised that being charming was off the cards too.

I had better bloody be attentive then.

"Sorry," I apologised, struggling with my phone once we'd found our seats up in the balcony. "I just need to finish proofing my post."

Ah. So not attentive then either.

I was officially the worst theatre companion in London.

Bollocks.

Janet is very forgiving though.

She even used the time to catch up on my posts.

I really don't deserve her.

"Right, done," I announced, having finally managed to post the damn thing, and even tweet a link to it.

Janet was done too, so we were finally able to concentrate on the important things. Like the decor.

"I like the balcony. You get a great views of those... things," she said, indicating the reclining naked ladies and fat babies that framed the stage.

"I like that one," I said, pointing at the most blatant of the naked babies. "Abs and fat. He's got the full package."

"And a trumpet," added Janet. "Where did he get that from?"

"What about those two?" I said, pouting at the Wedgwood-blue cameos placed either side of the stage. A man and a woman, very much not facing each other. "Who are they?"

Shall we look at the programme?" suggested Janet.

Sometimes I forget that programmes are things to be looked at, and not just collected.

Programme duly brought out, we found the timeline. It started in 1903. Which wasn't particularly promising. These were not Edwardian-looking faces.

"They look late 17th, early 18th century to me," was Janet's opinion.

I agreed. The bloke had definite big-wig hair going on. (All about WEAVE! Holy shit. Thank god for that. You can stand down now, my friend. We got there in the end).

But I have to say, even given the benefit of 24 hours before writing this post. I still don't know the answer.

The Wikipedia page dedicated to the theatre was less than helpful.

It's as if theatre-goers aren’t interested in the minutiae of theatre interior decor, which makes no sense at all.

With a bang, the lights went out.

The curtain rose.

Darkness was replaced by... I don't even know. What is that colour? Not red. Not pink. Not purple.

Wild salmon, perhaps. 

Walls and bed-sheets and curtains and carpet and tiles and dresses and coats, all in that strange, queasy colour.

Then I realised what it was. It was the colour we were never meant to see. The colour of our insides. The chamber of a beating heart. A sliced through kidney. A length of intestine so fresh it's still digesting something...

That reminded me.

"I forgot to eat the thing!" I said as we emerged out onto a side street outside the theatre.

The pastel de nata was still in my bag.

Not for long though.

I ate it on the tube home.

Yum.

You spin me right round, baby, right round

"I'm so excited for tonight," messaged my colleague to me before she'd even got into the office that morning.

Martha and I were going to see Les Mis together that evening, and Martha was pumped.

Martha loves Les Mis. She’d seen it twice.

I like Les Mis too. But it’s hard to feel excited about going to see a show when you literally go and see one every damn night. I've been to the theatre 47 times this year. Forty-seven. That's one per day with two extra for luck.

So, it's hard to get enthused about yet another musical. Especially one that you’ve seen before. Even if the before was… fuck… seventeen years ago.

For me, going to Les Mis felt like just another check mark against my masterlist of London theatres.

And a long-winded one at that. Have you heard what the running time on this show is? It’s three hours.

That’s a full half-hour longer than the majority of West End shows. And over an hour longer than Come From Away, the 9/11 musical currently playing at the Phoenix.

As check marks go, this one was going to take a long time to draw. And considering how low on ink I am generally at the moment (have I told you how ill I am recently? Because I’m really sick, you know) it was unsurprising that I was less than excited about the whole thing.

“Shall we go out for dinner?” said Martha, bouncing over to my desk that afternoon.

God yes.

Food was going to be an absolute necessity.

“Leon?”

There’s a Leon directly opposite the Queen’s Theatre. There’s even a crossing right there. Getting from one to the other can be achieved with little more than a stumble if you time it with the traffic lights.

Perfect. “Perfect,” I said.

And it was perfect. After a leisurely stroll into the West End, we ordered far too much food and scoffed the lot. It’s amazing how much your mood can improve after eating a burger and a portion of chicken nuggets in a single sitting - some people get endorphins from exercise. Personally, my neurotransmitters start firing after a hefty dose of Korean mayo.  

“At least we don’t have to go far,” I said as we struggled up the stairs.

On reflection, basement seating had been a bad idea.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only mountain we had to climb.

“Is that the queue?” I exclaimed in horror as we crossed the road.

The packed foyer of the Queen’s Theatre was spilling out across the pavement, blocking the doors, the signs, and any indication of where we were supposed to go.

Picking a door at random, we joined the queue. Only to be turned away by our lack of tickets.

“Aww,” said the ticket-checker on the door with a tilt of her head. “And you’ve queued all that time,” she sympathetically cooed.

So back outside we went, took two steps to the right, and joined the next queue. Attempted to, anyway. As it was impossible to tell where the queue was, or even how many there were. Did each ticket desk have its own, or were they sharing?

This is when it pays to be going with a plus one.

“Let’s split up,” I suggested. But Martha was way ahead of me. Literally. Her chosen queue was miles ahead. “Give them my surname!” I called after her.

She rightly gave me a look to indicate that she knew how to pick up a damn ticket, and didn’t need instruction from the likes of me.

A few seconds later, she was back to rescue me from my unmoving queue.

“Got them?” I asked redundantly.

“Yeah!” she said, waving them. “I enjoyed being Maxine Smiles.”

“Did you? Did she comment on it?”

“Yeah. I got a ‘Smiles!’” she said, lifting her voice in mock-surprise at the name.

I gave her a smile of my own. And not just because of the delight my surname brings, but also because I now had a witness to said delight.

We headed back to the original door, and this time managed to gain entry, and for the first time in my marathon, had a yellow security tag threaded through the handles of my bag.

“I have to buy a programme,” I apologised. This was quickly followed up by apologies for stopping to take photos of the corridor, the ceiling, the auditorium, and the aforementioned programme.

I’ve really become a pain-in-the-arse to go to the theatre with since starting this marathon.

“I need to go take photos,” has now became my general interval refrain.

“Well, I need to go to the loo,” was Martha’s retort.

After wandering around and eventually having to ask an usher as to whereabouts of the lady’s conveniences, we eventually located them down at stalls level.

“You should really write about how bad the loos are for women,” said Martha when she eventually emerged.

She’s not the first one to suggest it. I’ve even been asked to write about specific loos (“The ones at the Royal Opera House are so fancy,” commented a different co-worker, prior to my trip there. “You should review them”), but unfortunately for toilet-kind, I’m not a great theatre-micturater. But I promise you now, if and whenever I use them - I’ll give you my two cents on spending a penny.

For now however, I’ll be talking about the light features.

“Hey, look - it changes colour!” I cried out, immediately getting out my camera to video the shades shifting above our heads.

As I stood there, in the middle of the foyer, filming to pretty coloured lights, an usher ducked down low to avoid getting in the way and ruining my shot.

A selfless act from someone keen to do their bit to enhance the experience that is: Les Misérables.

Between you and me (and I swear to the theatre gods, if you repeat any of this I’ll cut you) it is quite the experience. Even for a jaded old hag like me.

From the huge wall of sound that is One Day More (“such an interval song,” was what I said to Martha as the lights rose. Literally nothing but an ice-cream break could have followed that), to the hottie to the waistcoat with a ponytail (character name forgotten, but you know who I mean), to the shocked giggle that sweeps the audience as Cosette changes race half way through act one, to the watery-eye inducing Bring Him Home (it’s my cold… I told you this already), to the mental exhaustion that is three hours of epic, fast moving, emotionally exerting, theatre that sent me right off to sleep as soon as head connected with pillow that night.

And the revolve.

Oh, man, the revolve.

This may well be the Korean mayo talking here, but can anything match the heartbreak of watching the barricades turn slowly round and revealing the events of the other side?

I’m not sure I have the energy to join the campaign to keep the ill-fated revolve right now, but you kids of the revolvution - I salute you. You are doing the theatre gods work. Down with the municipal guard! Down with confused queuing systems! Down with projections!

Martha may have stepped out humming One Day More, but I came out ready to start a revolution. 

At Her Majesty’s Pleasure

It occurred to me, while sitting up in the balcony of Her Majesty’s Theatre, that Phantom of the Opera was the first West End show I ever saw. My brother had taken us all out for our mum’s birthday. I remember cringing down in my seat, overwhelmed by embarrassment as the cast started to… sing. Ergh! Were they really going to do that all the way through?

I was about eight years old. And Phantom was too, as we both premiered in the same year.

And look at the pair of us now! How far we’ve both come.

Growing together. Learning together.

I’ve dropped in to check in on my theatrical-sibling a couple of times over the years. See how he was doing. As the (slightly…) elder of the two I thought it was my responsibility, as a big sister, you know.

Okay. I went once. When I was at university. Which, if your maths has been keeping up, you will know was a very, very long time ago.

I’m a terrible sister.

And as I don’t want to let our relationship deteriorate ant further, I came to the conclusion last night, while sitting up there in the cheap seats (a tenner on GILT donchaknow), that if I really was going to die during the marathon, then it was going to be on that night. At Her Majesty’s.

It just seemed right.

Not only because of my great kinship with the show. But also because, if I did manage to come back to haunt the theatre, I would then become The Phantom of The Phantom of the Opera. And if that isn’t a title worth dying for, I don’t know what is.

This was destiny knocking, and I was waiting by the door ready to go.

The usher posted on the balcony that night seemed to agree.

“I'll be looking after you in the balcony tonight,” he said, positioning himself at the front of the tier for his introductory speech. “Right now, take as many photos as you like. But once the show starts, no photography is allowed. If I see you, and your screen will betray you, I will embarrass you.”

Yeah, okay mate. But one can’t die of embarrassment. Believe me, I’ve tried.

“During the interval,” he continued, his voice ricocheting off the ceiling. “For health and safety please don't congregate on the stairs as you may fall.”

Ah. That’s the stuff. That’s how it was going to happen. That’s how my marathon was going to end.

“The rake here is very steep, so don't lean forward,” he went on. I expected some dire warning about tripping and plunging head first into the stalls, but he merely followed up with an explanation that leaning forward blocks the view of the people sitting behind. Which is also good. I suppose.

“I'll shut up now,” he finished before taking up post at the wooden podium behind us, from which he could watch us all. Master of all he surveyed. A god up in the gods.

He was as good as his word.

“No photos in the auditorium,” he boomed during the interval. “I can see what your screens are doing.”

Obviously I instantly took my phone out and attempted to snap a shot.

Pointed down. Aimed at my knee.

I’m a rebel, not a tosser.

But obviously my phone crapped out and the image didn’t save, so you’ll just accept my confession without proof.

Devoid of a functional phone, I had to find other ways to secure my demise.

The door to the balcony was promising. Looking for all the world like it had been bought at the prison-closure sale, it held distinct possibilities.

Seemingly made of metal, this door could do some serious damage if I could find someone to smash it into me, accidently or otherwise.

But there was no one about.

I moved on in search of other methods of extinction.

A little way down the stairs there was the strange case of cubby-hole 98. I don’t know what secrets the preceding 97 doors held, but I was sure that number 98 contained something fantastically dark and hopefully dangerous.

I gave the handle a tentative tug.

Locked.

Whatever was in there, wasn’t getting out.

What else? What else? What else?

Choke on an ice-cream spoon?

Crash into the scale-replica of the theatre built of Lego that I found in the Grand Circle bar?

Hand over my debit card to the lady on the merchandise counter and tell her to keep on going until the inevitable heart attack?

Somehow these ideas managed to lack both the dignity and theatricality that I was after.

I didn’t want the other theatre ghosts to laugh at me, after all.

How could I hold my floating head high in front of William Terriss, who was stabbed to death by a fellow actor at the Adelphi stage door and now haunts the theatre? Or Charles Macklin, famed ghost of Theatre Royal Drury Lane, who was the one who did the stabbing, puncturing the eye of his co-star with a cane while they argued over a wig (no one says what happened to the spirit of the stabbed man. Presumably he wasn’t that fussed about the wig after all, and has moved onto a realm where wigs are no longer a concern)?

If I met my end by way swallowing an ice-cream spoon, I would be the laughing stock of the annual theatre ghost convention, an event which, if it isn’t already a thing, I will institute as soon as I am within the theatre ghost ranks.

No, if I was going to go, it had to be impressive. A story worth telling at parties.

I ran through a few options as I watched the second act. I could have made a flying leap for the chandelier, but that had already had its crashing moment before the interval. Or I could have strung myself up with the Punjab lasso. That one fulfilled all the criteria - it would fit in with the show. I could organise some grand, on stage reveal - tears of shock and screams of horror would be bound to follow my discovery. There was one problem. The lasso is an invention of Gaston Leroux and is not a thing that actually exists. And while the show does have one that appears on stage, I’m not entirely sure how functional it is.

I was running out of ideas. Just as I was considering breaking into the cleaning cupboard and seeing what options lay within, the final notes were echoing up from the pit.

It was all over.

After stumbling my way down all the steps, drunk on tunes and eighties perms, I made it outside - safe and somewhat-sound.

And I realised that it was probably for the best that I didn’t die at Her Majesty’s Theatre. Phantom is going to outlive me whatever I do. And while I love my masked brother dearly, and would like to visit him more often. I’m not sure moving in is the best thing for our relationship right now.