Our Relaxed Performance of Me and My Girl welcomes individuals, groups and families with children on the autistic spectrum, sensory and communication disorders, a learning disability or anyone who would benefit from a more relaxed theatre experience.

Family Tickets Available

You can get Half Price tickets for up to four Under 16s attending with every full priced paying adult (up to a maximum of 10 tickets). 

Family Ticket discounts (selected performances) will be applied at the checkout page. 

Please note that this discount does not apply to Saturday evenings, Previews or Press Nights or to the lowest two prices in the Festival Theatre. All tickets must be booked and paid for in a single transaction.

How does directing a musical differ from directing a play?

A musical is definitely more collaborative. You have a choreographer and a musical director, which of course you don’t have for a play, so that adds two big brains to the process, who really – along with the designer – have an equal amount of input, sometimes more, depending on the show. 

Do dancers learn steps differently to actors learning words, who slowly gets to grips with the dialogue in rehearsal?

Dancers and singers have to learn songs and steps straight off, otherwise you can’t rehearse. The other thing is that with singing and dancing you can be on the right note or you can be on the wrong note; and actually with text that just isn’t true, so in that sense it’s a different discipline. With dialogue, there can be a thousand different ways to do something; whereas there are elements of the disciplines of singing and dancing which require a degree of accuracy that mean you can either be right or wrong.

The motivational part of the work remains the same – you still have to know who you are, where you’ve come from, where you’re going to, what you want – but within a much narrower parameter, of knowing that your leg can be at the right angle or the wrong angle.

What are the different rewards of musicals and plays as a director?

What’s interesting is working with groups of people who are inevitably going to be at various stages of experience of doing musical theatre. For example, working with Omid Djalili last season [on Fiddler on the Roof], a brilliant comedian who had taken over the role of Fagin in Oliver! but hadn’t originated a role in a new musical production. Those performers, while they are generally known for their comedy, also have the amazing ability to make the text feel fresh and spontaneous and “in the moment”.  Matt Lucas and Caroline Quentin are two such actors.

They also have a rapport with their audience because they’re used to having a direct line to the audience – and particularly in certain kinds of musicals. In Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye talks to the audience constantly and indeed in Me and My Girl Bill has a kind of subversive nature to his character, which means that he’s constantly breaking the fourth wall. That really fits hand in glove [with their experience as comedians] and means they’re wonderful to collaborate with. It’s interesting working with them on the songs because it’s often a new discipline for them, to sustain thought through music – which is a very different thing to sustaining it through dialogue.

Me and My Girl opens 2 July and runs until 25 August.