The hubby and I popped over to Loughborough Town Hall to enjoy a night out learning about ghosts of the theatre world and unsure of what we were going to be watching we went in, as ever, with an open mind – especially as a quick glance of reviews online showed star ratings from 1 to 5! We really had no idea what to expect.

As Act One opened we were introduced to Adam – our ‘host’ for the night who was going to tell us all about the ghosts of the theatre and it was fascinating as we learned about some of the more well known characters of theatre land. If the evening had stayed on this theme then I would have been very happy as it really was fascinating – it would have earned all 5 stars at this point.

Sadly though, it didn’t stay on this track however I am not going to go into detail about the plot of the show as we had been requested not to share the secrets. As more players entered the story the performance started to lose its appeal. The comedy aspect of the performance became more slapstick than funny and we were laughing almost out of embarrassment rather than because the content was funny which was such a shame as it could actually be quite a funny performance if it wasn’t too busy and woodenly over-acted – if it had kept to the more conversational portrayal that it started with.

At one point it became overwhelming as the action on the stage was often masked by the overuse of the smoke machines or the darkened lights. Those same smoke machines were distracting during one of Adam’s monologues as the theatre was so quiet apart from his talking and the buzzing sound of what I could only put down to the mechanics of the machines pouring out the seemingly continual smoke over the stage.

I really did want to write a kind review and as I was returning home I was thinking about how I was going to write it but the more I thought about it the more I realised that, although I enjoyed the performance it was  for the wrong reasons – because I was laughing at the performance rather than with them and that made me feel sad somehow in a world I love – where respecting the performers is at the heart of my theatre visits.