While I attend most of the People’s Light plays, I don’t consider myself a bona fide theatre buff. So, the prospect of seeing 7 plays I didn’t choose, in theaters I didn’t know, all in the space of 10 days and with 30 other people (most of whom I had never met) was not one of my top priorities a year ago. Yet, earlier this year, Jan and I found ourselves aboard a plane to London to do just that. In a last-minute decision, we had joined the People’s Light 2026 London Theatre Tour. We hoped our hasty decision would be a good one. Fast forward to the end of the tour…it absolutely was!

Obviously, the plays were the tour’s backbone and they ran the gamut from 2-person to large cast, musical to straight, familiar to rarely performed, political/social commentary to biography. The variety of theatres added to the experience - from one with a stage so large it could accommodate a forest and river to one so intimate that we had the sense of being in the room where the play was performed. One memorable theatre is the Bristol Old Vic which traces its beginnings back to 1766. It was easy to believe its claim of being the oldest continually-operating theatre in the English-speaking world!   

By now, you are probably wondering what the plays were: Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream, Brant’s Marie & Rosetta, Coward’s The Rat Trap, Nicholson’s Shadowlands, Sondheim’s Into the Woods, Gorky’s Summerfolk, and Craig’s The Holy Rosenbergs. Each performance experience was such a treat! 

But it wasn’t just the plays and venues  themselves. We had post-show discussions with people associated with each performance and talks with The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph writers as well as behind-the-scene tours. We learned how a 3 ½ hour Coward play was cut to 2 ¼ hours, how a Shakespearian actor was cast in a singing role without ever having sung on stage and how the sound of thunder used to be produced (by rolling a cannon ball down a wooden chute). We visited an 18th-century granary which now houses a vast archive for research on almost anything theater related and an astonishing collection of  period costumes, some of which we might have seen if we had attended a Les Misérables performance or watched The Gilded Age on TV. 

The 18th century granary now houses a vast archive for research

I know it sounds like we were always busy, but that’s not the case. The tour schedule included plenty of free time to poke around the walkable town of Bath, to explore a museum in London, to do some shopping in Covent Garden or just to relax in our charming hotels.  Of course, wonderful English breakfast buffets awaited us each morning. We had several meals as a group, but also had the opportunity to go off on our own or find impromptu dining companions. There was always someone with whom to share time and conversation. It was a delightful group of people, all with a genuine interest in theatre. Some with a real passion for it added a show or two and could recall the roles played by various stage actors in past years. Others (like me) were content with  the 7 scheduled and only recognized mainstream actors like Hugh Bonneville (who starred in Shadowlands).   

In all, the wonderful mix of people, plays, theatres, scheduled events and free time made the Tour so enjoyable and interesting that next  year Jan and I might well find ourselves aboard a plane for the 2027 People’s Light London Tour. You should think of coming along.