Olivier Awards 2014 Best Dressed

I've fallen off the radar blogging-wise recently as the final few months of third year have become almost unbearable and university has completely taken over my life. If I'm not in the archives I'm in the British Library, and when I'm not hidden scrolling through microfilms at the BFI I'm frantically writing my dissertation. I've barely had the time to surface to do a #100happydays post on schedule let alone anything else, but I decided to take a weekend off before I ran out of steam and couldn't have planned it better as yesterday afternoon saw the 2014 Olivier Awards take over the Royal Opera House and Covent Garden.

Ushers: the Front of House Musical

As an Usher you’re consigned to the fact that your stage is not the actual stage, but the foyers, bars and corridors surrounding the auditorium. You may be able to hit every note of ‘Defying Gravity’ from Wicked, know the choreography of A Chorus Line inside out, and have practiced dying on a barricade (the back of a sofa) at home for when the call comes to join the cast of Les Misérables, but that doesn’t matter. 

Versailles

As 2014 marks the centenary year of the First World War, it seems entirely fitting that there’s currently a significant increase in interest surrounding the conflict. The BBC’s World War One season is starting to gain traction, with documentaries and dramas either already aired or in the pipeline for the coming months. It’s not only the television that’s seizing the moment: the theatre world is joining in too. 

American Psycho: The Musical

“My need to engage in homicidal behaviour on a massive scale cannot be corrected.” 

Coriolanus

Booking tickets to see Coriolanus at the Donmar Warehouse was almost as stressful as last minute exam revision. Within 28 minutes of the box office opening the entire run had sold out in a frenzied fight over limited seats. Somewhere in amongst frantic refreshing I managed to secure what felt like a golden ticket, and had I not been on the ball I certainly wouldn’t have been so lucky. It was well worth the stress, though, as Josie Rourke’s Coriolanus proved to be a gripping and intense production with a powerhouse performance from man of the hour, Tom Hiddleston.

Sleeping Beauty

Thanks to so many bad experiences with panto, I've always figured that I'd been put off for life. To me it's always been tacky, childish and an exercise to be avoided at all costs thanks to my annual primary school trip. It was always a disaster: something went wrong on stage, the audience frequently loved to heckle and it was universally awful. As my first forays into theatre were through panto it's a miracle that I stuck with it to become such a huge fan of the stage today.

However, I'm a firm believer in second chances and although I disliked an awful lot (everything) about the primary school trips to Crewe I wasn't about to let bad memories of shocking productions taint my opinion of panto now. Surely it's deserving of a second chance? I wanted to do something quintessentially Christmassy to mark the end of my last Michalemas Term at university and so I leapt at the chance to see Sleeping Beauty at the Park Theatre. Would this shake my long standing hatred of panto or confirm my previous theories were correct?

A Midsummer Night's Dream

I love Shakespeare. Always have, and I hope I always will. 

Summer Musings

I've had the best summer.

The Cripple of Inishmaan

Subscribing to The Times has to be one of the best things my mum's ever done. Last night I was lucky enough to see the critically-acclaimed play The Cripple of Inishmaan followed by a post-show Q&A with Daniel Radcliffe thanks to the team at MyTimes+.*

*and I literally bumped into Jon Hamm. omgggggg!!!

A Curious Night at the Theatre

Every now and again I come away from a moment feeling so happy, so lucky and so inspired that I feel like I can do anything I set my mind to: be it applying for an internship I'm convinced I'm not good enough for, traveling round the world at the drop of a hat, or walking up the stairs at Covent Garden tube station (harder than it looks: there's a lot of steps...). There's simply nothing I can't do and 'impossible' is no longer a word in my vocabulary. It's a magical feeling that I've not experienced for a while, but the floodgates were opened when I emerged into the cool night air on Shaftesbury Avenue following an utterly fantastic and totally unique evening at the theatre.

Olivier Awards 2013 Best Dressed

I adore the theatre. Having been a part of my school's stage crew for 5 years I gained a real appreciation for the stage. I still experience a certain thrill and a spine-tingle every time I enter a theatre that takes me back to hours spent following scripts by torch-light in the wings, frantically changing sets between scenes and cursing the cast's innate ability to break and lose props with no knowledge as to how they managed it. These memories are some of my most cherished (ignoring how stressful they were at the time!) and helped to develop a special and unique adoration towards theatre that I really can't explain properly, but hope will never fade.

Unfortunately I don't get to go as often as I'd like to, so have decided that as a mid-year's resolution (not a thing, but it is now...) I'm going to make a substantial effort to go more. Living in London is a dream come true, and being so close to so many world-class productions and not seeing them is a total crime, so come 30th May and the end of my exams I'll start working my way down my list of shows. I'm excited already!

Back on topic, last night saw Covent Garden transformed as the Royal Opera House hosted the annual Olivier Awards. A celebration of the best of British theatre, the awards were as glamorous and spectacular as expected, with hosts Hugh Bonneville and Sheridan Smith entertaining those inside while the piazza was filled with theatre fans watching on a large screen.