Your first time... How was it?

Not for the last time, my first time wasn’t much to brag about. It would have been local pantos (hardly inspiring, but very good fun), getting involved in the odd am-dram (acting didn’t do it for me), and children’s shows live (vague memories, possibly fabricated, of Bodger and Badger Live). We were taken to some West End musicals when we were young – didn’t much care for Phantom, was particularly taken by Les Mis (I think we saw that three times before I was 10, which surprises me now looking back, given how dark and full of dying sex workers that show is (though you’d be surprised how many dying sex workers they snuck into Bodger and Badger Live)), and even, get this, saw Martine in My Fair Lady (undoubtedly it’s that show that prompted my love of musicals, though I’ve vague memories of a local Me and My Girl seeming like the most groundbreaking piece of work to innocent little me, still adore that show). Hell, I even enjoyed Stomp – was I ever that young?

The first thing I remember not just enjoying but adoring, the first thing that inspired the kind of awe only theatre can inspire, was my first NT trip which just happened to be His Dark Materials – it wasn’t until seeing Sir Chuckles in Ivanov during my formative teenage years that I felt that shared emotional weight and inexplicable empathy of theatre and became utterly obsessed, but long before that it was absolutely His Dark Materials which sowed those seeds and wowed me so. I’d loved the books, and add to that the on-stage magic and those tremendous performances from a cast you’d kill to see now – the memories amaze me still. I only now realise how much of that was less down to the stagecraft and more down to how well it spoke to my tender emotions at that young age. Obviously yes, I was impressed by a chasm as big as the Olivier, by the nature of the marathon, by seeing brought to life that impossible story that I knew by heart and loved back then, but it was more to do with the brilliance of the storytelling – said it before and will say it again, the moment that most lingers in the mind is the moment when Samuel Barnett takes off his mask and now he has become Death. Nicholas Wright was the unsung hero of that show. So yes, after that, how could I not love theatre?

In fact, that’s why I’d feel sorry for someone who’s first show would have been something like Treasure Island, or heaven forbid wonder.land – it’s impossible not to be impressed by a place like the Olivier and by the staging only it is capable of, but without a script that makes you care, it’s just empty spectacle, a quick thrill and then home – a bit like other first times I could mention.