No I Never Heard It At All, Till There Was You...

I haven't written about theatre for a while, but I'm meant to be somewhere tonight that has made me want to.

January was long as hell (I mean, isn't it always) but without the things we all use to get us through it seemed doubly long.

I really missed the theatre in January - it's how I get through. Panto runs at work for the first two weeks of Jan (yeah, we run for a LONG time!), which helps to keep me going,  and then a few trips up to London for some shows helps drag me to the finish line.

But as we all know, none of that happens. We're all indoors, at home, looking out the window at the cold and the wet weather. Trying our absolute hardest not to go batshit insane.

The thing that made me want to write this today is a notification I got on my phone this morning, which told me that tonight I am due to be seeing 'The Music Man' on Broadway with Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster, and it made me incredibly sad (and a little bit emotional).

I'd essentially forgotten that I'd booked tickets because I booked them in September 2019! I've also had a refund on them because of the run being postponed, I just hadn't taken it out of my diary. 
There were plans in 2020 for a trip to New York, and then this trip in 2021, but we all know that the world had other plans. I miss New York terribly - it truly is a one-off, and a place I could spend so much time and constantly constantly discover new things, new places. 

I love a glitzy musical revival, and this promised to be wonderful. Hey, it still will be when we get there. Hugh is a wonderful showman and we know he'll be a great Harold Hill, but I'm so much more excited to FINALLY see Sutton Foster on stage. People are arguing she's a boring choice for Marian, but I think she'll be just delightful. I cannot WAIT to see her do something wildly different (and basically I just want to melt seeing her and Hugh sing Till There Was You)

It made me feel a lot of things, but I think overwhelmingly it made me feel really sad again.
It's been seven weeks since I last saw a piece of theatre (Pantoland at the Palladium at the closing night of the West End in December) and I ache for it. I know it's not safe at the moment - trust me, I get that we are in a worse state than when we shut down originally in March - but it doesn't stop it being painful.
I've said it before and I'll say it again - when your work and life are so entwined as mine is, it all feels doubly hard all of the time. Everyone is having a super hard time, and despite there being some hope, there doesn't seem to be a return to normal life in sight.

I don't really know what this was for, but I just wanted to write something short about something I was really looking forward to.

One day we'll get there...