Day One - Thursday 22nd June, 2023: "Mission Impossible UK Premiere", Odeon Leicester Square and "Moulin Rouge! The Musical", Piccadilly Theatre, London.

We crammed so much into our first post-pandemic holiday (without the dog), I've had to break down the posts into days. This one details the first day.

We got the bus into Paisley (putting up with the extended rendition of Baby Shark from one excited young girl), then took the train from Gilmour Street to Central Station, where we'd booked seats on the Avanti West Coast Line to London Euston. 

Arriving in London without incident, we managed to find our way to the Premier Inn too early for the 3pm check-in. They wanted an extra tenner to allow us into our room at that time so we explored the local area until the designated time. The queue when we returned was long as everyone it seemed had had the same idea as us, only they returned sooner and waited in the lobby. We were given a room on the ground floor, which was pleasant and quiet, despite the heavy traffic outside the window. The air con did a marvellous job keeping the room cool.  

"Moulin Rouge! The Musical" was our first scheduled event, but before this, we got a little distracted by a certain UK Premiere taking place in Leicester Square. Perhaps to minimise the risk of the talent being assaulted/ insulted or maybe to rake in a profit from the exclusive event (tickets from £1500), this Premiere was behind closed screens with high, curtained barriers and scaffolding stopping passersby from seeing what was going on. Even the motor vehicles bringing in the talent had blacked-out windows. What we were able to see, though, was a giant screen above the Odeon Cinema, carrying the event live (my images are all taken from this screen, hence their fuzziness) so we ended up watching everything from the park in the Square, behind the TKTS booth. Fortunately, we could also hear the interviews clearly as they were being broadcast across the event. I missed taking snaps of all of the guests, such as Vanessa Kirby and Rebecca Romjin, but here is a sample of some of the better ones. 

Tom Cruise on signing duties

Simon Pegg explains how his role got bigger

Hayley Atwell

Rebecca Ferguson

Cary Elwes

Tom Cruise

Ted Lasso star Cristo Fernández and his sister, Paloma Cinco

Mark Gatiss

Frederick Schmidt

Esai Morales

Anson Mount (Captain Pike from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds)

Indira Varma

The day was incredibly hot and it only got hotter by the time we made our way to our seats in the Royal Circle of the Piccadilly Theatre on Denman Street. 

The great thing about the West End is how shows inhabit the theatre, transporting you to another world. 

All very Rouge

Even before the show started, performers in tight leather pants (males) or stockings and bustiers (females) move slowly around the fringes of the extended stage to the background music, some even joining us upstairs on the Royal Circle to dance seductively in the cages on either side. On the stage, gentlemen in top hats engaged with the performers adding to the atmosphere, that of nineteenth-century Paris. 

The show itself is not a direct lift from the film but instead distils its essence for the stage. The music is different including more recent songs. We both really enjoyed everything about the show: the lighting; the staging; the choreography; the singing, every part pitched perfectly. We were glad we were upstairs to take in fully everything going on. Cleverly, a lot of the dialogue contains snatches of song lyrics, the familiarity engaging the audience as they recognise the words. My only disappointment was that the souvenir brochure did not reflect the current cast and, unable to stretch my leg as we sat, the pain in my left knee was almost unbearable. 

This developed into a painful theme for the holiday.