Too Much Theatre?

I love the theatre, anyone who knows me knows this! I did a whole blog post at the beginning of the year about all the shows I wanted to try and tick off my list this year, and I’m happy to say that I have successfully crossed four shows off that list!! What started off as just seeing one show with a friend, turned into seeing as many as we could in four days.

I’m going to start with the only one that wasn’t a musical, and that was Whodunit (Unrehearsed). I think it’s finished it’s run now but it was very good. The concept was that the inspector trying to figure out this whodunit, is played by a different actor every show who had never seen the script, or met the cast before, and has their lines fed to them through an earpiece. Despite not really knowing what to think for the first half an hour, but the end I was crying with laughter! Did I know what was happening most of the time? No. Was it hilarious regardless? Definitely!

A definite favourite was The View Upstairs, which was absolutely fantastic! I went into this knowing nothing at all about it and was very pleasantly surprised. It was also my first experience of an opening night show! The biggest surprise was probably seeing Andy Mientus, who I’ve adored as long as I can remember, and never thought I would be able to see. It tells the story of a building the was burnt down, leading to a gay pub to burn to the ground, with the patrons still inside. The music was fantastic, but the acting was second to none. I’m so glad I didn’t get to see it again before it finished!

Why yes, I did see Hamilton for the second time, and you know what? I would go back for a third. There is just something about this show that leaves me wanting to watch it over and over. The music is so amazing, Lin-Manuel Miranda is just an absolute genius! If you haven’t heard of this one yet, where have you been? Everybody’s talking about it! I could ramble on and on about how magnificent this one is, but I think I’ll save it for another post and just say if you can get seats, see it!!

SIX was fantastic, I really wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was happily surprised. It’s very different from any other kind of show I’ve watched, but I kind of liked that about it. There’s no interval, and it isn’t as long as your typical musical so if you’ve got 75 minutes to spare and you fancy learning some HERstory, this is one you cannot miss out on!

Now I know that there was a lot of hype for Everybody’s Talking About Jamie when it first came out, but I feel as though that hype has dwindled slightly. It’s a very good show, the music is fantastic and I really love the staging, but would I rush back to see it? Probably not. It might be one that I go and see again after a while if I can get cheap seats, but I wouldn’t rush back like I would for Hamilton. There’s nothing wrong with the show, and I did really enjoy it, but I don’t think it has the rewatchability for me.

I also felt similarly about Waitress. Again, I actually really enjoyed the show, the cast was fantastic, and it was fantastic to finally get to see Lucie Jones in something (she’s just as great as you think), but would I rush back to see it again? I don’t think so, it’s the sort of show I might take my mum to see, but I wouldn’t go back by myself.

Possibly one of my favourite shows I saw, was Come From Away. There are not enough words to express how much I loved this show, but I’m going to try and form something that makes sense in a separate post. Because it’s that good, it needs its own one. All I can say is that if there’s one show on this list that I have been recommending to everyone for the last few weeks, it’s this one!

I would happily, and have been, recommending these shows to everyone I’ve spoken to since seeing them. They are all amazing in their own right, and while I might not see some of them again, I’m very glad I did at least once. If you fancy seeing a show sometime soon, I would happily recommend any of these as fantastic viewings. Have you seen any good (or bad) shows recently? What’s on your list to see before the end of the year?