I feel like I’ve barely stopped the last week or two! I’ve been here, there and everywhere!

First up:

I was working for children’s comedian and author, James Campbell, the week before last. He is currently in the process of turning one of his books into a show for children to perform. It starts off with a week of rehearsals and then weekly rehearsals after that and a performance in November!

It was a really lovely group of kids and I’m really excited to see how it turns out after a couple more months of rehearsals. Unfortunately I won’t be helping out with the rehearsals anymore as it’s just a bit too far to be commuting each week. I’d be travelling longer than the actual rehearsal itself! But I have already booked my ticket to see the final performance and I cannot wait.

Next place:

I went to the Palace Theatre in Westcliff on Thursday last week and that was to watch my very talented cousins in the national tour of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Joseph is my absolute, all time favourite musical. I was absolutely gutted when they announced it was leaving the West End. So I was thrilled when my cousins told me that they were going to be in the choir for the stint at Westcliff.

I was pretty pleased with the theatre’s access – it was nice and easy to book accessible tickets and they advised me they have a specific access program in case I was likely to coming back to the theatre at any point which allowed me to get discounted tickets for a companion coming with me.

The wheelchair spaces were just at the end of the rows at the back of the stalls before the seating becomes tiered. It’s not a huge theatre so it wasn’t a problem until everyone stood up at the end for the big final number to dance and clap along. At which point I got a great view of everyone’s backs and the tops of the performers heads. 😂

But apart from that it was very easy to get around – bar the thick carpet which is a NIGHTMARE for pushing wheelchairs on but this is such a common feature so I can’t really fault them for that.

Overall, I’d give them three wheels out of five.

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At lastly I went to see ISHQ the musical on Friday evening at Sadler’s Wells theatre.

This had my brother and sister in it (I know, my family are very talented…I’m just waiting for them to get rich and buy me a house). I was very impressed with the access at Sadler’s. It is quite a large theatre, although clearly much more modern than some of the older theatres in town that I’ve been to. The disabled access was clearly signed, there was no difficult carpet to push on and the space for the wheelchair seats was in a great position and I wouldn’t have been looking at people’s backs even if everyone in front of us had decided to stand up like they did at Joseph!

I was very happy with the access here so they get 4 wheels out of 5

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Just in case you think I’m being stingy, I’m only going to give 5 wheels out of 5 if I genuinely think somewhere is perfect. So it’ll be a big occasion if somewhere actually does get 5.