Stage Right: The What's on Stage Awards - A Night of Glitz, Glamour and Pure Hilarity

Hi my lovely readers, how are all of you? I'm having a fantastic time, especially as I'm going to see the Priscilla tour for the first time this Thursday...excited isn't the word!!! AND last night I went to the What's on Stage Awards...well when your mum offers to buy to a top price ticket plus a room at a luxury hotel, it would be rather silly to refuse.

Well to begin with, the evening looked like it was going to be a right royal disaster as we'd been told our tickets would be waiting for us at the hotel and, well, they weren't. However, the hotel concierge was lovely and started rushing around to get us and the other people sorted. Well, after about 2 hours of panicking our tickets arrived at reception and what a relief that was!!!

So after a quick bite to eat at Bella Italia and a lovely cocktail for me called Berry Bellissima, it was off to The Palace Theatre. I was expecting this to be emotional as this was where Priscilla was housed. Although it felt a little odd, it wasn't as strange as I thought, mainly because it wasn't like seeing a show so it was a completely different experience altogether.

The theatre was absolutely buzzing when we arrived and after a bit of confusion as to where us plebs should enter, we took our seats, G19 and 20 in the Dress Circle, and WOW the view was completely amazing!!!

The show was being hosted by Mel Giedroyc and Rufus Hound. Now I've heard quite a lot of criticism about them on Twitter and their presentation style. Firstly, they weren't allowed to read out the names of the nominees so this wasn't actually their fault. Secondly, I don't know whether the live streaming involved the links they did in the middle of the awards or not but my sense of humour found this completely hilarious...maybe I'm just warped but both my mum and I found them so totally funny we just couldn't stop laughing!!!

There were, also, little performances by some shows which was a really nice touch to the evening. These included Taboo, The Bodyguard, Soho Cinders, Sheridan Smith, Spamalot and Top Hat. My favourite had to be the song that Spamalot did called 'You Won't Succeed in Showbiz'. This has been changed from the original version 'You Won't Succeed in Broadway if You Don't Have Any Jews' and now mocks the fact that shows need celebrities to survive nowadays.

Anyway, the main point of the show was the awards. To me these were slightly bland because of the fact they couldn't read the nominees names out as I feel this would have made the atmosphere a lot more tense. I was quite happy with the majority of winners although I think that Oliver Tompsett should have won for best take over (well I am a little Oliver fan) and, personally, I think Top Hat should have won a lot more. A special congratulations has to go to Sweeney Todd, their actors and their creative team as they ended up taking 5 awards home! The Bodyguard needs a mention as well as they landed the award for best new musical...well done guys. Oh and I'll just mention Tim Minchin who won best supporting actor in a musical just because he's fab and he sang really well on the night too!!!

Here is a link of all the winners.

Well, after the show we headed round to Balans for a bite to eat and some cocktails. I had a Pornstar and a frozen Strawberry Daiquiri (which was flipping cold) and my mum had a Buttery Nipple and a Cosmopolitan. However, the best part was that we got talking to the guy and his friend on the table next to us and it turned out that he works backstage at Matilda! Had such a lovely conversation, and yes I did manage to have a discussion about the Priscilla tour as well. He even offered to get our WOS programme signed for us and could do us a backstage tour the next time we were in London...OMG!!!

So after a totally amazing evening, we headed back to the hotel (The Hampshire in Leicester Square), which was absolutely beautiful and I'd highly recommend it for it's location and the fact it was really quiet!!!

Did anyone else go to the WOS Awards? If so what did you think? I know there's been quite a lot of criticism about the rudeness of the hosts but as I said before I don't know whether that was my warped sense of humour or what...and anyway we are in a West End where the Book of Mormon is on!

I'll leave you with some pictures of my evening...