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The Last Five Years
Southwark playhouse, London

If not exactly normal, it has become at least familiar to sit masked and gelled in a theatre with several empty seats around, not because the show isn’t a hit but to reduce the risk of Covid-19 hitting.

However, at the just reopened Southwark Playhouse, we – while still face-wrapped and sanitised – are shoulder to shoulder in the stalls, but with thick sheets of protective plastic dividing us into household groups. The effect, which has also featured in artists’ impressions of future air travel, is of watching the show from a narrow, see-through open-fronted tent. Although I initially had to fight claustrophobia, and theatregoers would be wise to go easy on shoulder-padded tops, this latest experiment in pandemic theatre felt plausible.

It helped that Southwark also had ready a show that meets Professor Whitty’s mitigations. Director Jonathan O’Boyle’s revival of Jason Robert Brown’s 1995 musical The Last Five Years opened in February, was nominated for eight Off-West End awards, but closed down by the coronavirus.

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