42 - The Mummy's Tomb, Exit Theatre at the Charles Cryer, Carshalton

I really enjoyed the big colourful characters in this production, but probably would have cut it down as it lacked the substance needed to keep our attention for such a long play.

This typical egyptian Mummy story sees an egyptologist, his daughter and her suitors on a quest to discover a lost tomb, only to uncover a cursed undead Mummy.

The best performances were those played in the required cartoonish style, so the characters which really shone were inevitably the baddies. Scott Nicholson was very funny as a posh trigger-happy Lord Soaper, but I did think a comedy walk would have completed the character. Sarah Jane was a real gem as the evil Egyptian queen and dominated the stage. James Farr played an excellent Nazi villain with a great stage presence who perhaps just needed to be a bit louder when talking in Arabic gibberish to the Egyptians.

The fights and action scenes should have been more cartoonish too to give a definite style to the whole thing, the best parts were the comic punches where there was a batman style sound effect.

Overall the acting felt like the actors had been asked to reign in the ott characters to make it more naturalistic like Indiana Jones, which didn't work. We didn't sympathise with the one dimensional characters, so we just wanted it to be funny.

This was one of the things which gave me the feeling the director, Graham Butler, did not seem to know what he was directing. The play was billed as a farce in the literature which it definitely wasn't. If anything it was a spoof, but not one which made any particularly knowing comments or jokes on the genre. The script was a melodrama, but Exit had cut out the songs so it no longer held together as one. It did occur to me that perhaps it was a family production for kids, who might have enjoyed it if it had been cut down a bit. However the promotional material did seem to be aimed at adults so I was left a bit bemused about who the target audience was, and what we were supposed to be watching.

There was some clever set construction, I particularly really liked the boat which folded up from the raised back area of the stage with the black curtains at the back pulled apart in a triange shape so the white wall behind created the appearance of sails. There was also a scne in which Lucy Hamilton as the archeologist's dim but attractive daughter was shown in silhouette in a tent being attacked by a snake which was very well executed technically and ended with a hillarious rescue with James Farr fighting a toy snake.

Overall this was fun but too serious at points and far too long, there is a reason Scooby Doo is only a ten minute cartoon and we grew rather weary by the end of the show!

41 - Legally Blonde at Savoy Theatre

Legally blonde is pure fun. I might have had to supress a feminist wince at some lyrics but it's all very tongue in cheek and the little dogs and dramatic sparkly set pieces made this a spectacle well worth seeing. I was just a little sorry not to have seen Sheriden Smith as Elle Woods as I suspect she would have been brilliant, but Carley Stenson did a grat job. Don't let all the pink fool you, this is a witty and clever musical, perfect for a girls night out.

40 - The God of Soho at The Globe

How lovely to see a brand new modern play at the Globe. This contemporary play uses classical traditions ike the Gods descending to earth to paint a picture of our obsessions with celebrity, hypocrisy and treatment of the homeless with vibrancy, colour and laughter.

Ska band King Porter Stomp got all the groundlings dancing, showing once again that if you go to The Globe and can stand up for a couple of hours, the yard tickts are the best in the house.

Massive characters like Natty (a loud Mouthed Kerry Katona-esque celeb played by a brilliant Emma Pierson)and her pretentious 'artist' Pete Doherty-like lover Baz are essential for a grand outdoor setting. These almost panto caracatures wre offset by a punchy script that mingled poetry with modern London dialect.

I'm suprised to read some very negative reactions to The God of Soho online, accusing it of hating its characters and being purile and gratuitous. I really didn't get those things from this play at all. However I have noticed those commenters frquently end with a grumble about paying £30 to see it. This play was not for the traditional Shakespeare audience paying to sit at the Globe. You made an error during the seat booking process. You neded to be standing amongst the carnival dancers in the yard, people! Then like me you would have come away thinking 'Blimey £5 for that amount of brilliant entertainment, what an absolute bargain.'

39 - The Merry Wives of Winsor , The Rough Mechanicals at the Charles Cryer

I hadn't seen the Rough Mechanicals before, apparently they perform a Shakespeare every year at the Cryer and I'll definately try and catch them in future.

Some great casting and talanted leads made this a really enjoyable romp through one of Shakespeare's more tedious plays. Falstaff looked like he'd just walked out of a pub sign and his jolly mischeviousness helped carry the play along.

There were a few line slips from the actor who played Mistress Ford but she didn't let it slow her down and was helped along by other cast members. The feeling I got overall from this production was the cohesion between th cast members, I really felt like they were having a good time. This along with the fact that they clearly knew and understood the play made this well worth watching.

I also thought the set was fabulous, with the bar in the middle of the stage right at the heart of the action and different locations around it, helping to keep scene changes to a minimum.

38 - Kiss Me Like You Mean It Bench Theatre at The Spring

I don't think this is a brilliant play, but four spectacular performances and skilled direction from Callum West made it a brilliant production.

Dan Finch was hilarious as soon as he emerged on stage dancing around with an inflatable shark singing Tom Jones' 'Sex Bomb'. He played Tony, a slightly drunk young man emerging into the yard from a house party to get some air. Soon he was joined by the cool, slightly sarcastic Ruth (Rosie Carter) and they attempted a conversation which evolved from embarrassing small talk and chat up lines to warm affection and chemistry. The delivery of the dialogue was varied and funny, some of the awkward moments between the two of them could have been from Peep Show or The Inbetweeners. While it's always funny to watch an awkward young man failing to find the words to chat up a pretty girl, this had the added bonus of a well developed and realistically flawed female character which made the performance much warmer. It was easy to identify with Ruth's obvious frustration as she talked about her life, a life she clearly felt had veered of course somehow, and didn't know quite what to do to put it right again. Carter's Ruth was fiery and stroppy which contrasted with Finch's laid-back slightly philosophical Tony brilliantly.

The staging of this first half could easily have been quite static, but I thought it was blocked out very well with just enough movement to keep the scene interesting without being distracting.

Much of the conversation at the interval was about the plausibility of the young couple's situation. It's true, I don't think the sudden attraction between the two of them is particularly realistic. I've been to a few similar parties and I can't see two twenty-somethings who have never met abandoning their respective partners inside a party to sit in the garden, form an attraction and make declarations of love to each other within the space of an evening. Unless they were on drugs or really drunk or something. And even then they'd probably just have sex.

However I also believe that a play can show something true without being particularly realistic. And accelerating a relationship to develop in just an evening between two very believable characters is just one of those things you can do in a play but not in a film. Particularly when it creates such lovely symmetry with the narrative of the other two characters.

However that's not to say I thought this was a great script, at times it tended towards the mawkish and contrived. But the great comic timing of all the actors involved meant it was touching and enjoyable.

The relationship between the young couple, the staging and the costumes seemed very fresh and modern, I don't know if that was just because I found them so recognisable. However this meant the slightly retro references in the first half jarred and felt a bit anachronistic, I think these could have been easily swapped out to bring the play bang up to date and give more contrast between the new couple and the old. I didn't see any reason to keep the play set in some recent decade rather than the present.

What really got to me about the play was the spellbinding performances by Sally Hartley and Peter Woodward as the older couple, Edie and Don. Having spent 50 years together, Edie and Don are reaching the end. Don has a brain tumour and they plan to inject themselves with insulin as the sun rises, ending life on their own terms. So they spend the night drinking all the old alcohol hanging around their flat and having rampant sex in full view of their window, which is where we, and Tony and Ruth, first glimpse them. The energy and sparkle both actors put into everything made their impending death all the more heartbreaking. From the hilarious scantily clad wiggling in the window to Edie's rush out to plant their house plants in the yard and Don's quest to source a curry flavoured condom, with the help of a perplexed Tony they took us with them all the way and portrayed a brilliantly believable partnership. But while Edie and Don still had much to give, they clearly wanted to go now, while they still shone brightly after a happy life, not eaten away cancer or lonely old age and there was no arguing with this decision.

We cried buckets. I had tears streaming down my face and could hear my mum sobbing away behind me. Edie and Don reminded me of my grandparents, even while not actually being anything like them really, and made me hope I find someone to love like that into old age and beyond.

37 - The Mother, Scoop

This was a great translation by Mark Ravenhill of Brecht's tale of a mother who gets involved in politics when her son starts protesting. It's a touching tale and was performed in classic Brechtian style by the clever Steam Industry Free Theatre company.

The production was let down slightly by the dodgy music, the rather average electric guitar playing was anachonistic and didn't fit with anything else. I suppose this could have been a clever alienation technique? Hmmm.

The company is losing its funding next year which is a travesty because free theatre at The Scoop is a London gem and gets a really eclectic audience including people who might never pay to see something like Brecht. But that is what happens when bastards vote in a government of bastard tory bastards including an idle rich bumbling tory bastard mayor of London who naturally would rather reserve the arts for people who can afford £50 tickets.

36 - Peer Gynt, Theatre Collection at the Lord Stanley in Camden

Theatre Collection use physical theatre and dance in a bare studio space to tell the story of Ibsen's Peer Gynt like a fairy tale. There was some skilful physical theatre, the highlight for me was when all the actors came together to create the Troll king, simple techniques like using another actor's hands as his own meant the central figure was able to represent an otherworldly creature in a really effective way.

I also loved the dark comedy when Peer came across what appeared to be an asylum in Egypt. Sebastian Canciglia as the raving Egyptian introducing the madmen was brilliantly comic and disturbing.

There was scarcely much of Ibsen's epic play remaining which meant that from the start the piece was very fast-paced. This meant that as I didn't know the play very well I felt a little confused about what the bigger questions of the text were and what it was saying. After seeing Ibsen's Emporer and Galilean at The National where you come away thinking about the human condition, religion and our place in the world, I found it a little difficult to adjust to taking Peer Gynt more as a simple fairy tale. However as the play is very narrative and there was a narrator figure guiding us through the plot was not difficult to follow.

The fast pace made the play into a series of strange visions, rather like being in someone else's dream which was complemented by the live music and interesting instruments the cast used. This was really clever and helped create the traditional story telling atmosphere.

There was also some lovely singing particularly the refrain from Nicola Fox playing Peer's love Solveig who waits for him and grows old as he travels the world.

Oliver Hollis-Leick played Peer Gynt very convincingly both as a young and impulsive dreamer and later as a more reflective older man. His charismatic and naive charm made him the ideal central fairytale hero, which was in ironic contrast to his flawed actions.

Don't go to see this to see Ibsen, go to see a slice of traditional skilful storytelling and you will enjoy it immensely.