Welcome back!

This past weekend I took yet another trip down to London, this time to see The Phantom of the Opera on the West End and I had such a fun weekend, despite a lot of stress and drama!

As with most, or all, of my London trips this year, I went with my friend Katie, as we had previously gone down for West End Live, which was what prompted us to want to see the full show. We especially wanted to see the current Cast, as their run in the show ends in September, so there wasn’t a lot of time left to see them, and I was able to find really good seats for an amazing price, so we decided just to go for it!

I was SO excited. This year has pretty much been my starting year of seeing anything and everything on the west end. I started by seeing In The Heights just after Christmas, saw 42nd Street during West End Live weekend, and from then I just began to make potential plans to see so many other shows. BUT, Phantom has always been one of my favourites, so knowing that I was about to finally get to see it filled me with nothing but pure joy.

We spent most of the day in The Theatre Cafe (see my post about this glorious little place HERE), catching up with friends and belting out show tunes, until around 4:30pm when we headed back towards the Royal Albert Hall, as we had dinner reservations at Verdi, the Italian restaurant where our good friend Becci now works. 

After we had eaten our food – which was soooo good, I’d highly recommend Verdi if you’re looking for somewhere to eat in London, just try not to knock half the tables over with the handle of your handbag like I somehow managed to do on my way in. Sorry Verdi! – we headed towards the bus stop to get the bus to Trafalgar Square to go to Her Majesty’s Theatre. It was finally Phantom time!!! 

Once we had been through a bag check and shown our tickets, we bought programmes and drinks and then went to find our seats. We ended up in the back row of the Royal Circle, and we were quite central, so we had a pretty good view. By this point, I was bursting with excitement for the show to start. But that excitement didn’t last too long. 

Pretty much as soon as it started, I realised that the cast we were watching wasn’t the Main Cast, they were understudies. Normally this wouldn’t bother me, as they still turned out to be absolutely incredible, but since we had rushed to see the current cast before their run in the show ended, I was quite disappointed that we had somehow managed to land our tickets on the one day the main cast wasn’t performing. 

I managed to put it behind me as I was still enjoying the show and it wasn’t the end of the world. That was, of course, until the woman next to me decided to start talking. And when I say talking, I mean she would NOT. SHUT. UP!
Every time something in the show happened, she would start pointing and waving at the stage and talking about what had just happened. At first, I let it go as the show hadn’t been on long, but as the first act played on, she carried on talking throughout the whole thing. At one point she decided to go on her phone – which was on full brightness – and she also was singing along. I was having an absolute NIGHTMARE of a time, as she was moving around and talking so much that I just could not concentrate on the show. It got to the point where I was considering reporting her to one of the ushers, but I was trying so hard to concentrate on the small part of Act 1 that was left, that I couldn’t risk missing any more of it by telling someone. So I ended up having to tell an usher in the interval, and she thankfully stopped moving around so much, although she was still talking, during the second act, so I was actually able to concentrate on it. 

Once the show was over, we decided that despite all the drama that had unfolded over the performance, we would head towards stage door and attempt to meet some of the amazing cast from that night. I didn’t have very high hopes as it was raining when we got out of the theatre, however, once we got to stage door we realised that it was mostly undercover, so we did, in fact, manage to meet some cast members, and they were all super lovely!

The next day we decided to take one last chance to redeem the whole experience since it wasn’t exactly how we planned it, so we went back to the stage door after the Saturday matinee, to see if any of the main cast came out. We stood there for quite a while and quite a few cast members who we had met the previous day came out, so we didn’t disturb them again, we just moved out of the way for them to meet the other audience members who were waiting. However, eventually, the Phantom himself Ben Forster came out and came straight to us asking us if we enjoyed the show. I then launched into the story of how we came to see him and Celinde in the show, but we ended up not seeing them perform, and he was so lovely about it and apologising (which I felt so bad about because it really wasn’t his fault at all) but he was so gracious and happy that we had come to stage door to say hi anyway, and we did tell him that we would happily see him in whatever he goes on to do next. 

Despite the massive drama and the show sort of being spoiled for me, I still had such an amazing time and the show really was spectacular. Meeting the incredible cast and seeing a show I was so excited about seeing made up for the issues that I ended up having and I’m so glad I decided to go.

Thankfully, my friend and I have decided to go back to see Phantom again in around three weeks time, so I am praying that there will be no noisy people sitting next to me and that the main cast will be in it this time. We’ve had to settle for seats that aren’t quite as good as the ones we had last week, but despite that, I’m so thankful that I’m able to have another opportunity to see this incredible show.

As always, thank you for reading. Look out for my next post about my London theatre visits, it may be a bit more successful than this trip was!

Until next time.