As one critic stated upfront: the press night is a major anti-climax. Nevertheless, while the verdicts don’t make a blind bit of difference to the box office on a production that sold …
Apart from my Edinburgh blitz, I like to take August a little slow on the theatregoing front. These few weeks offer a brief respite while many people are away on holiday or still up at the F…
Food poisoning, the infamous “festival flu” or some other strain of (literally) gut-wrenching misery? Whatever it was, I became quite violently ill on the train journey home from…
Dear reader Writing a blog in the form of the letter (as I did with my Conversation with Caitlin Moran series) about the stage adaptation of the 2012 book Dear Lupin allows me to both …
Birth-wise, more than three decades separate The Who's Tommy and Green Day's American Idiot, but location-wise, the distance is only three short train stops, from London's Charing Cross t…
I had ninety, non-stop magic moments at the Menier Chocolate Factory earlier this month at the opening of What’s It All About? Bacharach Reimagined. Sat on one of the (extremely com…
If you have never been unlucky enough to find yourself in the middle of a legal dispute, I can almost guarantee you " or, at least, 99% of you " that you can't afford it. Certainly not if it…
I had a life-changing moment on Thursday night. I showed up to an event where I didn’t know anyone and discovered it was exactly where I belonged. Relationships aside, I’ve had t…
Since I got back from my month of remote working in Mallorca, I've been lucky enough to pack in lots of trips to the theatre, including this quintuplet of limited season plays that are all w…
Comics were out in force and applauding warmly at last night's opening of The Mentalists, in which fellow stand-up and The Office co-creator Stephen Merchant made his West End acting debut "…
Have you seen the raft of four-star reviews for our current Featured Show? The House of Mirrors and Hearts, just opened on Tuesday at London's Arcola Theatre, is a haunting new chamber music…
The adage – usually attributed to Sondheim – that “musicals aren’t written, they’re rewritten” was central to the post-show discussion that I hosted …
Shakespeare aside, is there any playwright more quotable than Oscar Wilde? And, of all his plays, is there any more quoted than his 1895 comedy of manners, The Importance of Being Earnest? A…
Is it all a Blur? That's a pun you may hear frequently in relation to the musical theatre debut of the seminal 1990s band's frontman, Damon Albarn, which opened in Manchester last night. won…
My Theatre Mates co-founder Terri Paddock moved her office to Mallorca for the past month - and got more done. Here she explains how you can do it too.
The reviews are in, and there's no doubt about it " the West End musical makeover of Bend It Like Beckham has scored big with the critics. Perhaps the show's impeccable timing " as the Women…
It’s the last chance this week to catch the French playwright Florian Zeller’s mind-bending play The Father, in which the father of the title (played with heart-rending bluster a…
Terri Paddock today responded to Megan Vaughan's recent article in The Stage on MyTheatreMates's "damaging business practices" - and here she explains why, however fallacious, she welcomes M…
Most actors don't read their reviews " or, at least, most actors say they don't read their reviews. And when it comes to stage acting, I can see their point. Critics review a single performa…
A few weeks ago, blogger Megan Vaughan wrote a piece for The Stage entitled ‘The long tail of theatre criticism‘. I was
There are few things that excite me more at a party than when I meet someone who says they can do card tricks. I will move heaven and earth to find a playing deck and then trail that person …
In my other blog today, I wrote about the "fact" that JM Barrie wrote Peter Pan as a metaphor for World War One. This was a little bit of a fib (explained fully here), but I thought I'd m…
Peter Pan is currently enjoying a critically acclaimed but maddeningly short run at the Open Air Theatre. (I understand the logistical reasons behind back-to-back productions in Regent's Par…
Have you seen the raft of four-star reviews for our Featured Show? The world premiere of Dogs of War, which is now running at London’s Old Red Lion Theatre, has also been nominated …
During my visit to the rehearsal rooms of It's a Wonderful Life on radio, which launches a new UK tour this week, I also got to chat to three of the incredibly hard-working, six-strong…