#MindTheBard 2020: round-up

And you thought a challenge week sans the theatre wouldn’t happen… It’s not the same, obviously, but I did at least have two live shows and one new to make it feel a bit more like the real thing. If you were keeping an eye on my diary updates and Insta stories you’ll already have […]

#MindTheBard 2020: Diary

Once again I thought it might be a good idea to keep a diary throughout this week, as it gives an opportunity to keep an eye on what’s been going on during each day – including each #BardFromTheBarn offering, which play has been seen, and maybe even a quote of the day. Make sure you […]

2020 mid-year update

Against my usual penchant for starting off slowly and then steadily heading for entropy, I went straight in at the deep end this year: my first week back in London (& the first full week of the year) was set down as #MindTheMusicals 2020! That means, of course, I began my theatregoing year by […]

The Show Must Go Online: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

I’m afraid Shakespeare in Love got it wrong on several counts – one of which is demonstrated here by The Show Must Go Online swiftly following up Romeo & Juliet with the perennially popular A Midsummer Night’s Dream. On paper a straightforward leap from tragedy to comedy, but I think you’ll find it’s a little more complicated than that… […]

The Show Must Go Online: Love’s Labour’s Lost

Thankfully for The Show Must Go Online, Shakespeare decided to keep things quite light for two consecutive plays – we were spared bloodshed once again with Love’s Labour’s Lost following hot on the heels of The Comedy of Errors. Not that a bit of onscreen/onstage bloodshed is a bad thing (my weekly Tarantino viewings are still going […]

Never Mind The Blog… Here’s Shakespeare Day 2020

We can’t be 100% certain, but it is widely accepted that William Shakespeare was born on 23 April 1564 – and died on the same date in 1616. Though the theatres are closed, that doesn’t mean we can’t mark Shakespeare Day in alternative ways… News The RSC has closed the Swan Theatre until the autumn, […]

Coming up in 2020…

What I’d usually do here is say I’m aiming to be sensible again, but that clearly doesn’t work – at the most it lasts about one or two months and then anything goes… So I’ll just say that I’ll think carefully about my reviewing commitments, and then everything else can sort itself out organically. What […]

Mind the Blog ‘on tour’ 2019

Even though I’ve become quite tired this year, and have tried to keep some sort of balance in there, I couldn’t resist nipping out of London every five minutes to see what was going on in theatres across the country. I even managed to start my 2019 theatregoing with a trip to Paris, courtesy of […]

Never Mind The Blog… Here’s Autumn/Winter 2019

The slightest of delays in getting this one out – but if you were dealing with unco-operative internet, a laptop whose keyboard still won’t work, and a manic month at work to prepare for, you’d be in the same boat. News Tower Theatre in Stoke Newington is celebrating its first anniversary, and will be […]

2019 mid-year update

Once again things started off steadily and sensibly, but then too much interesting sounding stuff (both in & out of London) came up and ended up taking over my diary… I may have again gone down in terms of the amount of shows I’ve seen in six months (103 different shows, 126 individual visits to theatres), but I […]