The other week, my mum, sister and I went on our annual weekend trip to London. As always, it was full of theatre, tasty food, interesting exhibitions and wandering around the capital.

After delayed journeys getting down, we were also smacked in the face with 36°C heat, which was a bit unbearable. Lots of cold drinks, seeking shady spots and good chat kept us going. Though one chair I sat on was so hot that its paint melted onto my back! In the evening, we went to see Oh, Mary! which is a comedic play about Abraham Lincoln’s zany wife. It was rude, silly and quite funny. When we saw it, Catherine Tate was playing Mary, and while I can appreciate that she was appropriately cast, her style of hammy humour wasn’t quite up my street. I’d love to see this show again with someone else in the role.

Our second day was still pretty hot. We decided to do a lucky dip of our shows for the Saturday matinee and decided to divide and conquer. My mum saw High Society, so we walked up to the Barbican with her and had a look around the gardens. Claire and I then walked back into town, got an iced tea and then she headed off to The Phantom of the Opera while I went to see Avenue Q. I’ve been curious about this show for a long time because it won the Tony for Best Musical over Wicked way back in 2004, and I always wanted to know why. I actually really enjoyed the show and found it to be both fun, silly and honest about the world that we live in. I knew that it had always been a story of acceptance, and in 2004, that might have been more about the identities of the characters. Today, it felt more like a story of accepting that we all may feel a little dissatisfied with our lives and the world we live in sometimes, but that is okay, and everything will eventually pass. The performers were brilliant, and I was really hit in the feels by the end, so it was definitely worth seeing. I can imagine how Tony voters responded to the relevance of the subject matter, though in the long run, I think Wicked is the stronger musical (and holds a special place in my heart! It was my first backstage job).

After the show, I had a little time to kill, so it was nice to have a wee seat and read my book in the sun. We met up again at the Seven Dials Market to grab something to eat before heading to see the Beetlejuice musical in the evening. I loved this show – it was so fun, irreverent and beautiful. The cast was brilliant, but especially Hannah Nordberg, who played Lydia – her voice gave me goosebumps! When I was younger, I did an amdram production of The Addams Family musical, which is so macabre, funny and underrated, and I think Beetlejuice really reminds me of that.

Our final day together started with a jaunt to South Kensington and to the Natural History Museum. We spent quite a bit of time in the minerals room looking at all the different crystals, and I even found some granite that comes from my hometown. We also popped into the V&A for a look around and picked up some goodies from the gift shop. Doddering about also brought us to South Kensington Books for a browse, and we sat down in the sunshine to enjoy a cold drink.

That evening, we hit up a favourite restaurant of ours: Bancone. This place has the pasta that my sister dreams about, and you can see the excitement in her face in one of the pictures above. After that, we headed to the beautiful Criterion Theatre to see Titanique. Once again, we were blown away by the talent, comic timing and voices of the cast. But I do think this isn’t the show for me. I don’t know very much about Celine Dion to get those references, and I’m also not sure that I liked the ‘yassification’ of an actual tragedy (even if it is attempted to be rationalised within the kooky bounds of the show).

It’s always a joy to refill my theatre cup in London and see more of the shows I’ve never experienced before. It was a bit of a mixed bag on this trip, but that kind of discernment is one of the joys of seeing different art, I think. Thankfully, we survived the heat, and most of all, it was just lovely to hang out with my mum and sister. Til next time!