Just for one…night!

 

On Thursday evening after work, rather than going for a walk then killing time waiting for MrEH in the car, or heading to the pub and sitting with a beer and a book until he arrived, instead I hopped on to the tube into Central London. Lovely and easy from where I work - the nearest station being about 5 minutes away and then a few stops on to on this occasion, Holborn as to start with I needed to pop to the shop at the London Transport Museum. Now, as all Londoners know, there is little point in going to Covent Garden station if you can instead get off at Holborn or Leicester Square, and on this occasion I was on the Central Line (the red one!) so Holborn it was. That’s “Hoe-bun” by the way- no debate here , “Hole-burn” in incorrect and sounds quite unpleasant!  😆

The museum is a short walk from MrEH’s office so we met there, did our errand at the shop, then walked through to Shaftesbury Avenue, where we grabbed first a portion of chips each from a nearby chippy (pricey, as expected, but quite tasty) and then a beer at the lovely Craft Beer Company before crossing the road to the Shaftesbury Theatre for a performance of “Just For One Day - the Live Aid Musical”. Now I LOVE the theatre, always have, but haven’t been for years for various reasons - tickets to West End shows these days tend to be extremely expensive, and sometimes it’s just hard to justify, you know? I’d spotted this show when it first began its London run, and thought it looked excellent, so I had been keeping my eyes peeled for a good offer, and sure enough at the end of last year, spotted a deal through Nectar for “tickets from £20” - I assumed that when I looked there would not actually be any at that price, but for once my cynicism proved well wide of the mark as there were plenty! I secured two seats three rows back in the Grand Circle (“up in the gods” as my Nan always referred to it!) for a straight £40 total - not even a booking fee to spoil our fun! For an additional £10 each I could have had front row but the excellent “View From My Seat” website reassured me that there was really no need to pay that extra cost, and so it proved - just look…

The show had me gripped from the opening moments - a story that everyone my age knows, but looked at through the eyes of today’s 18 year olds - already world-weary and firmly of the opinion that our generation got it all wrong of course! The reference from Jemma - the young girl off to university - to “studying the 80’s in history” brought giggles from a lot of the audience! The cast were superb - so full of energy and some absolutely amazing singing voices, and the band providing the music were also fabulous. The set was incredibly cleverly managed - minimal props, and those there were being moved on and off the stage by the cast themselves meaning set changes were almost seamless. A platform with stadium style seating which moved forward and back on the stage  as needed was used to create the feel of people in their seats at the gig, media at press conferences, and various other settings, and when not needed it simply slid back underneath the band riser out of the way. Many of the cast played multiple characters too - in fact there wasn’t really a “leading role” at all, something which was reflected in the curtain calls at the end when the whole cast took their bows together as one ensemble. Something we noticed also was that there was clearly one cast member missing - but this was covered seamlessly and the only reason it was noticeable was due to a gap on the stage at one stage where clearly there should have been a cast member - whatever part they should have been playing was obviously picked up by others brilliantly. Of course the music too is an absolute highlight - all the hits you would expect and a few you possibly wouldn’t. By my reckoning Queen are the front-runners for hits featured with at least 4, but then what would you expect, but everything is played and sung flawlessly and it was nice to see members of the band getting their moment in the spotlight at various points through the show, too.

The show is coming to the end of its run in London, but will be heading out on a national tour from March I believe. Should you go and see it? Yes - RUN to the box office, you won’t regret it, and you will leave grinning after a thoroughly joyful couple of hours! 

Robyn

(All my photos were taken either before the performance, during the interval or at the curtain call as requested by the theatre)