I sat in a theatre and watched actors performing on a stage this week for the first time since the beginning of March. It was wonderful and strange and made me realise how the pandemic has changed the experience.

The play was called F**k Off, at the Bread and Roses pub theatre in Clapham. Kudos to Integrity Theatre for taking the gamble and planning the production without knowing if live performance would be allowed.

Henry (Michael Dunbar) is the protagonist of the piece; a boxer trying to make a comeback, training hard and trying to get his head in the right space.

A win in the ring would mean money and opportunities.

Complicated life

But outside of the ring, it is complicated. His ex has moved on, there is a court case, an absent father who wants to get back in touch and a trainer who has a dodgy side-hustle.

All good threads for creating tension and drama in Henry's story, shaping the character, except they leave more questions than they answer.

Creation Theatre has taken online live performance to a whole new level with its latest family show Alice.

Leda Douglas in Creation Theatre's Alice

Described as a virtual theme park, this is part interactive theatre, part style your own adventure, part video game and it is enjoyed from the comfort of your own living room.

Based on Lewis Carroll's famous stories of Alice in Wonderland and adapted by Zoe Seaton and Charlotte Keatley this has all the well-known characters and familiar scenes of the books.

It is imaginatively brought to life in the style of an old fashioned fairground with a combination of high tech wizardry including AI and good old fashioned theatre craft and entertainment.

Choose your story

We join Alice (Leda Douglas) via a Zoom call to be transported into her fantasy world. Fairground music sets the scene for the roller-coaster adventure to come and for the first part of the show you get to choose where you want go and explore.

A click on an icon takes you off to meet characters including the Mad Hatter, twins Tweedledum and Tweedledee and the Mad March Hare in their Zoom rooms with their own stories and entertainment.

Don't dither in your choices though as you may miss bits.

Is it ironic that in going to the theatre with strict social distancing in place, I felt closer to an actor than at any time before?

The Donmar has opened its doors, the first major theatre in London to do so, but with live performance still not allowed it has created what is an extraordinary experience using sound.

Blindness is adapted by Simon Stephens from a novel by José Saramago and tells the story of an epidemic in which people suddenly go blind.

Juliet Stevenson plays the narrator, then the doctor's wife, the only person who can still see as  society struggles to cope with its sudden predicament.

The Donmar, partially by design and partially by necessity, has been stripped back so that it is both familiar and different.  The bar is stacked with boxes and equipment and stage and seating have mostly been removed from the auditorium - there are still some of the benches stacked against one of the walls.

It's transformed into an open space with pairs of seats strategically placed across the floor for social distancing but facing different directions.

When theatres had to close in March, I thought it might be a month or two before I was back watching live performance again.

As the weeks passed, it became obvious that it was going to be much, much longer and I stopped thinking about when I might return.

Did I imagine, that at the beginning of August I'd be sitting on a wooden bench wearing a mask with 30, socially distanced, others waiting for a live performance to being?

No.

The live performance was a series of stand-up comedian's headlined by Ed Gamble and wooden bench was in a courtyard at Battersea Arts Centre. 

With indoor theatres still closed, it is a genius use of outdoor space which also has a balcony level where some more people could stand.

So what was the experience like?

Sunday Theatre Questions started on my Instagram and FB channel back in February and I'm really enjoying reading the answers and stories. So, I thought I'd share some of them here, starting with my first Sunday Theatre Question:

And here are some of the choices from the good theatre fans on Instagram - interesting that After the Dance came up more than once...

@Vickster_51

No surprise, but 2010’s After The Dance at the NT. I just loved everything about it so very much.

@pcchan1981

I'm going to go for The Glass Menagerie at the Young Vic. Just something beautiful about that production. Would have to be staged somewhere different of course, couldn't have something like that at the YV now.

@loureviews.blog

Tom and Clem with Alec McCowen and Michael Gambon. It ran for a few months in 1997. About Tom Driberg and Clement Attlee. Remember it with great affection and with Alec gone and Michael retired, I'd love to see it again.