When we have sufficiently tortured each other (NT): I never thought I would be pleased to hear Kesha’s Tik Tok along with the other mindless pop used, but it came as a blessed relief from the dialogue that had gone before. Blanchett is amazing, but I thought the material was poor and repetitive (and not remotely shocking). My friend, however, loved it. He said that the set seemed to be designed to look like pr0n, which does make sense, given the garage setting and the cheap-looking costumes (other than the corsets) and deliberately ill-fitting wigs. He also compared it to industrial music, where it sounds harsh and seemingly the same all the time, but there are subtle changes going on that your subconscious mind registers. That was all too deep for me, and I just couldn’t stand any of the dialogue between Blanchett and Dillane. I did love Jessica Gunning and thought that her scene with Blanchett was by far the best thing in the play.

Waitress (WE): I went in knowing nothing about it other than that it was a successful musical that I had skipped every time I go to New York because there’s always something else I’d prefer to see. And I’m afraid I was very happy with that decision. The score was lovely, the songs were excellent and the singing generally also excellent (except for Jack McBrayer). But I hated the book (that poor woman resident who dared to take a residency somewhere other than Connecticut, dragging her poor husband along with her and throwing him head-first into cheating on her) and I thought that Katharine McPhee had much better chemistry with Marisha Wallace than she did with David Hunter (although the whole Jim Halpert does adultery storyline left me cold from the beginning). And I don’t have any children myself, but I thought I could feign interest in a doll better than Katharine McPhee did. (The less said about Jack McBrayer the better). Even though I am North American, this was much too American for me.

Come From Away (WE): It was really wonderful, and the accents better than the original cast (except for Petrina Bromley, of course). A tiny bit too Irish, but generally very good. Jenna Boyd wins the accent crown for me, she was just perfect at everything she attempted. I thought Rachel Tucker sounded wonderful (and her Annette was particularly good and particularly funny) but I do prefer Me and the Sky in the original key. The one thing I would say is that I think there is a bit of a tendency to rush and not to let the lines land. Clive Carter and Nathanael Campbell were particularly good at not doing that, and they got the most laughs, along with Jonathan Andrew Hume. I think at this stage, a lot of the audience will know the show and won’t particularly laugh at the funny lines, but the new people will need a moment to digest. But these are very small quibbles, it was so so good and I do think people are going to love it. I also think I spotted Rabbi Sudak standing at the side of the stalls as I was exiting, he must have been back stage. (That article from the JC was great, but all I could think was where on earth they would have found Manischewitz in Gander in 2001 – the bottles must have been sitting in the NLC shop for 20 years.) What a lovely show, and a lovely production.

[Blank] (Donmar): I appreciated it overall, but I did note the passage of time. The scene near the end was devastating, but didn’t feel particularly earned. I thought of news stories I had read with similar outcomes whilst listening . I enjoyed the dinner party scene more than I probably should have as a paid up member of the middle classes, but it felt like over-egging the pudding in a number of ways. Treating the deliveroo wine delivery person noticeably worse than the actual drug dealer made little sense, especially since they accused the former of dealing drugs and welcomed the latter in a frankly unrealistic way, even given the tenor of the conversation. And I appreciate that Mum didn’t want to miss anything, but you wouldn’t hesitate to go and see if your child had been pissed on, if only to keep up appearances.

Moulin Rouge (Bway): I thought this was visually amazing, gorgeous dancing and singing, and the costumes and sets were stunning, but it moved me not a jot. It was worth it for Danny Burstein, god bless him, but I could have taken or left the rest of it. Other than Danny (and Sahr Ngaujah and Tam Mutu, who were fab) it felt very paint by numbers. I had such high hopes sitting down, with the beautiful cast unsmiling, striding about and casting a menacing presence. But that dissipated immediately in favour of an aerobicised and clinical approach, which was decidedly lacking in sex appeal, for me. The only moments I began to feel something were the songs from the film – all of the rest just felt like very high grade karaoke. For me, there was much more passion in Virtue and Moir’s Moulin Rouge ice dancing programme from the most recent Winter Olympics. I was gobsmacked to hear people sobbing near the end and wanted to tell them to get to their nearest opera house and see La Boheme and/or Carmen, which do this much, much better.

& Juliet (WE): Well I just loved this. It’s obviously lower budget than Moulin Rouge (which I saw last week) but this had oodles of feeling and was beautifully performed and I enjoyed it more. I felt that the songs were used to great effect and I didn’t have the feeling that trying to spot them took me out of the show, which I had had last week. I loved all the cast, who were clearly having a ball. I think it’s just what we need in these times and could have something of the same effect that Mamma Mia did.

Pretty Woman (WE): I’m enjoying it more than I thought I would – the cast are charming, the singing is lovely as is the dancing. The songs are forgettable but adequate. But honestly, I paid £82.50 for my stalls ticket and the costumes are actually offending me. I could get better ‘80s-influenced dresses anywhere on the high street – Phase Eight, LK Bennett, even M&S.

City of Angels (WE): I’ve never seen this before and thought that Fraser, Craig and the other usual MT suspects were fine, but that Rebecca Trehearne was the true standout, amazing. It felt like there was a lot of filler in the first act, most of the men (other than Fraser) could act but not sing particularly well and I didn’t relish any of their songs. Agree that the tennis song was particularly uncomfortable. I also hated Stine’s character (although not as much as Fidler’s). I thought that I was being asked to choose between Harvey Weinstein and Aaron Sorkin and frankly, I reject them both. Team Donna and Bobbi.

Little Wars (online): Oh, I have missed this. A play, a new (to me) play, to watch and to which to react and with such great actors “interacting” with each other. Monologues are good (in many cases, great) but this was different. The acting was uniformly superb. The use of Zoom was innovative and clever. The play…had issues. In many ways I wish the playwright hadn’t used the names of real people, because so much of this depended on suspension of disbelief that just wasn’t possible. I’m sure some of the details with respect to Stein and Toklas were inaccurate, but I don’t know as much about their lives as the others. But Lillian Hellman was no innocent in June 1940, she was a communist sympathiser from years before. Muriel Gardiner may or may not have been the “Julia” of Hellman’s Pentimento, but there is no denying that Gardiner was a very good spy and no spy would have acted in the way the character did in this play. And Agatha Christie was many things (I am a big fan) but she was no friend of the Jewish people, at least not as reflected in any of her books. The historical inaccuracies took me right out of the play. But I was gripped, and recommend it highly.