Sorry for
the late post; work and the flu has pushed me back a bit! It has been another
busy week in my theatre life as I have managed to fit in 3 shows into the week
and have had the life changing experience of queuing up for tickets when the
new season has gone on sale.
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| The Crucible all lit up! |
Last last
Thursday I managed to get a public dress rehearsal ticket to see The Nap, which I was incredibly happy
about because I had missed out on the Live for 5 tickets for the previews. The Nap is a comedy-thriller about
snooker written for and about The Crucible. Sounds like a weird concept, I
know, but I thought it was hilarious! The plot revolves around the up and
coming snooker player, Dylan Spokes (played by Jack O’Connell), who is
blackmailed by a local gangster, Waxy Chuff (played by Louise Gold), to throw a
frame. It also starred Mark Addy (Atlantis
and Game of Thrones) and Ralf Little
(The Royle Family), which, you know,
I was very excited about. Richard Bean, the writer, also wrote One Man, Two Guvnors and that farcical
humour also carried over into The Nap. I mean it was completely crazy but
fabulously so! And hey, I got to see a snooker game at the Crucible (that
totally counts, right?) so not a bad evening all in all!
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| New look tickets for a new play! |
My next trip
to the theatre was to see the Northern Ballet’s Swan Lake. This was the first ballet I’d seen live (I’d seen the
Northern Ballet’s version of 1984 on
BBC Four a few weeks prior) and I really enjoyed it. It was pretty mesmerising
to see the dancers’ strength to be able to lift, contort and hold themselves in
positions that seemed pretty uncomfortable to be in, and make it all look so
easy! Not going to lie, I was a little bit jealous – I’m not a dancer and have
no natural grace! I knew the music of Swan
Lake and, thanks to Black Swan, I
thought I knew the story, but Northern Ballet’s adaptation was updated and
brought the story out of its mythological context and into a more human realm. They’d
set it in an Edwardian New England and this setting worked really well with the
Wilde-ian nature of the homoerotic subplot. It certainly felt more human with
the exploration of themes like unfulfilled desire and loss and grief. And of
course, the music was superb! I do enjoy a bit of Tchaikovsky! I really enjoyed
it all and I will definitely be going to the ballet again (providing I can get
£5 tickets of course!).
As an
ambassador for the Crucible, I worked the NT Connections festival which was all
about new writing for young actors. This was a really good opportunity to
highlight the Live for 5 scheme and talk to young people who may not
necessarily have known about it (although it was slightly terrifying having to
talk to lots of people!). The NT Connections festival happens all round the
country so if you’re interesting in writing, performing or just watching, take
a look at the website here.
Queuing for
new season tickets was stressful. That’s it. We got there nice and early – 45 minutes
before the box office at 10 to be precise! – and still managed to end up
queuing for an hour and a half! It had recently been announced that Sir Ian McKellen
and Sir Patrick Stewart were going to be performing No Man’s Land at the Lyceum in Sheffield. That’s what everyone was
queuing for, including us! However, we wanted the Live for 5 tickets and this
put extra pressure on us. We scouted out the queue and quickly realised that we
were the youngest there but there was still quite a lot of people before us in
the queue. A couple of days before, Live for 5 tickets became available online
and, as the clock struck 10, we realised that this might be our only option to
get these tickets. Thank goodness for that! If we had waited it out, those
tickets would have been sold out! After logging in and waiting in an online
queue for 10 minutes, the tickets we wanted were ours! I think the woman at box
office was slightly surprised when we asked for the James Plays tickets rather than No
Man’s Land, though we then did ask to pick up those tickets. So a stressful
morning but well worth it in the end!
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| Just some of the next lot of tickets! |
So yeah, you
can now sign up and buy Live for 5 tickets online so literally no one (as long
as you’re aged 16-26!) has an excuse! Click here to set up an account and make
sure you include your date of birth so that every time you log in, Live for 5 tickets
will automatically be available for you.
