One of my life goals was to see Richard O’Brien on stage in Rocky Horror, and on Friday night I made it happen.

Most dreams you can’t put a price on. This one I could.

We went to the Playhouse Theatre in London and I saw the maddest production of Rocky I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen a few). As always, the audience were as much a part of the musical as the cast; one of the things I love most about this musical is people-watching (the audience’s outfits are so creative and daring, let alone the cast’s) and the actors responding to audience members’ yells and insults. My stomach hurt from laughing so much.

Richard O’Brien himself was fantastic. At 73 he was up there singing more than the typical Narrator role does, making witty retorts to audience members, and even sharing a kiss with Frank N Furter…all the while wearing tight leather pants and holding his own on a stage full of semi-dressed people several decades younger. All the cast was brilliant, and I loved that they made more of Colombia’s role and the moment Brad was trying every acting trick in the book to not laugh at Frank laughing.

The only negative about the show was that it was the mostly strictly policed I’ve ever been to in terms of not taking photos. I will say now that I’m super respectful when I see or hear that I’m not allowed to take photos somewhere, and I’ll be the first to be looking for a sign or asking someone what’s allowed if I’m not sure. I get actively angry when I see people taking photos in the Sistine Chapel. But the policing of the show was crazy. There was one point when an usher actually flashed a torch repeatedly down our row in the middle of a song because someone had their phone out, and I found it very distracting and not in the spirit of Rocky at all. They were like this all the way through. Perhaps having a few moments to let people take photos would have stopped this happening, I don’t know. But it was still fantastic, and I was so happy I achieved this goal.

On the way back to the hotel I took a quick snap of the London eye with my phone (still have a lot of love for this camera):

And I tried my first salted caramel cheesecake Krispy Kreme. Oh. My. God. It’s amazing.

Because it was a last minute (ish) thing, I overspent on the tickets because the theatre was really small (amazing atmosphere because of it though) and I had to buy from a third party website, and so I booked a budget hotel to compensate. I hate budget hotels, so this was a huge sacrifice for me, but after we stopped laughing at our basement lair complete with Marilyn Monroe ‘headboards’ (just pictures), we realised it was actually really good for the price…especially as it included free wi-fi and breakfast. We didn’t stick around for food though, as we had a train to catch back to Nottingham to meet up with some friends.

We went to the Kitty Cafe (only my second time there, surprisingly), and Sarah and Alex absolutely loved it. Here are some of their pics, because I was way too tired to take any:

After that we headed over to a theatre (also called the Playhouse, confusingly), to see a production of 1984. It was the darkest thing I’ve ever seen on stage. It was a very ferocious interpretation, with interesting use of time and light and dark, and even some on stage torture that was uncomfortable to watch (in a good way). I think it’s a production that’s touring the UK, so if you can see it it’s definitely worth getting tickets. There was no interval and it was a solid 90 minutes, but honestly I can see why they did that and apart from being tired it held my attention pretty much the whole time.

I couldn’t believe it was still only Saturday afternoon once we were done (!) We wandered round town for a bit and then went home and I basically collapsed for the rest of the weekend. I’ve been constantly exhausted lately, and I think it comes from doing too much stuff in combination with not sleeping too well lately. Let’s hope I have some time to catch up this week!