Yet Another Week at the Theatre

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.

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!

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!

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.