Sitting In The Cheap Seats

It isn’t often that you can sit in the theatre and be certain, before the show begins, that you are about to bear witness to something special that will be talked about by theatre fans for years to come!

When it docked at Southwark Playhouse Titanic bagged a WhatsOnStage award, a clutch of Offies and plaudits aplenty, it also snagged a transfer to Toronto where another wave of rave reviews from audience and critics alike awaited it. Now it returns as the figurehead of Thom Southerland’s inaugural season at Charing Cross Theatre .

I’m a bit of an Avenue Q fan, I think we can admit that. In fact, every time this production has appeared anywhere near home I’ve made a point to go see it, you can read my thoughts on this production in Winchester and Portsmouth to find out just how much I loved it the last time it toured the UK.

Following the four Shakespeare history plays, King & Country: Shakespeare’s Great Cycle of Kings, which kicked off 2016 at the Barbican Theatre, the touring production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream: A Play for the Nation visits the Barbican for a week of performances in May, with London amateurs from the Tower Theatre joining the cast as the Rude Mechanicals, and pupils from Eastbury Community school and Beam Primary school in Barking and Dagenham playing Titania’s fairy train.

I’m a relatively new convert to Shakespeare. Going to an all-boys secondary school in the mid-nineties there was very little focus on arts subjects and it put me off the bard for a long time. Even when I finally started going to see productions of Shakespeare’s plays I was wary of the Royal Shakespeare Company . These were the protectors of the canon and surely would be the toughest to truly appreciate! Then I saw Antony Sher as Falstaff…

We’ve always been intrigued by Stephen Daldry ’s highly revered production of this classic play but it has somehow consistently eluded us. Determined to cover it when the next chance came we dispatched Emma van Kooperen   to report in for us!