Monday Night at the Apollo – London

Monday Night at the Apollo is a series of three concerts being held at the Apollo Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, in support of the charity Acting for Others. It’s an evening of songs and informal conversations with five familiar West End faces hosted by Greg Barnett (Miss Littlewood, Swallows and Amazons).

Featuring Aimie Atkinson (Six, Pretty Woman), Cassidy Janson (&Juliet, Beautiful), Lucie Jones (Waitress, Rent), Cedric Neal (Chess, Mowtown the Musical) and Julian Ovenden (South Pacific, Downton Abbey), they spend the evening sharing their favourite songs and memories in a celebration of all that audiences have missed over the last year.

With the performers able to choose music that is personal to them, they share a variety of styles and genres: From musical theatre favourites like Waitress, Kinky Boots, and Dirty Dancing through to Tom Waits, Adele and Dolly Parton (and many more).

The assembled talent means the music is, of course, outstanding, (as is the live band) but the conversations that follow are also a joy to watch, ably facilitated by Barnett – who also treats us to a Gregory Porter number to kick off the evening.

If there is a theme to come from the evening it is of celebration: celebrating performers doing what they do best and being back in a theatre with a live audience. While social distancing meant the auditorium was under half-full, the enthusiasm from the audience more than made up for their small number. The atmosphere was no less for it.

And that, after all, is what theatre’s all about isn’t it? It’s a chance to escape life for a while and become engrossed in a live performance which will never be repeated in quite the same way ever again. It’s that unique shared experience that’s impossible to simulate any other way.

The show will run twice more, on the 14^th June and the 5^th July, each with a different cast, with 10% of all proceeds going to the Acting for Others, a charity that provides financial and emotional support to all theatre workers via 14 different member charities.

If you can make it along in person you will not regret it, and for those who can’t do so in person it is also available to livestream via the theatre discovery platform Thespie.

Runs twice more on 14 June and 5 July 2021