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 […]
Read More 2020 mid-year updateOne month ago today I was sat in a theatre for what I fully expected to be the last time for quite a while. SOLT had closed all of its theatres even as audiences were beginning to arrive; the United Kingdom government, when it eventually acknowledged we needed daily briefings, began doing them at any […]
Read More Hurry up and wait…Understandably, I find myself running a little behind on my reviews – this one, however, will probably be one of the more surreal things to have to write up. Press night was Wednesday 11 March 2020 (again, sorry): the day the World Health Organisation conferred pandemic status on the current COVID-19 outbreak. Why is that […]
Read More The Time Machine“More loneliness than any man could bear, rescue me before I fall into despair…” There are certain bands and artists that it’s almost cool to dislike or ridicule; Coldplay is probably the best modern example, but often it ends up being a selection of groups or singers from a previous generation – your mum still […]
Read More Message In A BottleI’m not sure why I didn’t see this one. Towards the end of its West End life I had the incentive of a Sunny alumnus being in the cast, so I should really have made it there then – the problem was that Victoria always felt very out of the way at that point, plus […]
Read More Day 6: Missed The Boat: Billy ElliotI very nearly did see this one, but it opened and closed so swiftly that I didn’t really have the chance – I wasn’t living in London at that point, so a bit more planning was required for my theatre trips. I must admit that I was also a little put off by a snippet of […]
Read More Day 4: Missed The Boat: Stephen WardOver the past few years, audience behaviour has probably been the biggest gripe to regular theatregoers (I refuse to continue to use the elitist label ‘theatre etiquette’), but a new contender stealthily emerged during 2019: stunt casting. It’s not like it’s a new thing at all; most big tours will employ a ‘face’ as a […]
Read More Day 3: “All the men and women merely players”It looks like it’s going to be a bit of a bumper year for musicals, both in London and across the country. The usual big hitters are still around, including the new production of Les Misérables which has recently begun performances at the Sondheim Theatre (formerly Queen’s Theatre), and a few imports will be making their […]
Read More Day 1: Musical choices for 2020What 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 […]
Read More Coming up in 2020…In terms of total views, 2018 was a bit of a freak year – so 2019 hasn’t managed to live up to it. However, it has continued on the trajectory that we would have been on had Mind the Blog 2018 not been so ridiculously popular… And, as ever, I’ve been watching the stats page […]
Read More Most popular posts of 2019
