Musicals marathon at the other palace

I am a tad drunk to properly review, but it was incredible. Marisha, Louise, Kim, Liam D and Emma stole the show. In fact, Emma was the only one to recieve a midshow stsnding ovation for her rendition of Listen. Brilliant night tho, cried several timws. Will review properly tomorrow!

Were you front row? I thought I saw you but wasn't confident enough to come over and say hi

Had an absolutely brilliant night, Paul Taylor-Mills put together a fantastic show (apart from the absolute disaster that was the Easter eggs, but the less said about that the better). It seems that all of the people that performed did so because they have a lot of respect for him, and although I didn't actually know him before last night, he seemed like a lovely person who is passionately dedicated to theatre.

Emma Kingston's Listen was definitely the show-stealing performance, she'd sung it last year and Paul had asked her to sing it again, I COMPLETELY understand why, she was incredible and had about half the audience on their feet before she'd finished the last note and the rest of the audience shortly after. Emma could easily lead any show (I'd love her to do Wicked although I'm not sure if she would) and her story about having 40 minutes from getting to the theatre to going on as Vanessa was funny - if a tad longer than everyone else's stories.

Marisha Wallace and Tyrone Huntley both got partial standing ovations for their performances, although I feel that both might have been triggered by the fact that Caroline Flack kept jumping to her feet after almost every song (that's X Factor syndrome for you), I did stand for Tyrone though, his rendition of Home was very powerful and moving (and as Paul pointed out, this time last week he was onstage in the Royal Albert Hall).

Other stand-out performances for me including Louise Dearman's Don't You Worry Child, followed by a joke about having a big lunch when it was very apparent that she was pregnant, both of Kim Crisswell's songs - what a beautiful woman, I feel now that I'm going to support her in everything she does, Christina Modestou's Black Magic, Idriss Kargbo's How Far I'll Go and Liam Doyle's You Will Be Found with a dislocated shoulder. Liam's story about how he and Jodie Steele got together was beautiful too, they're such a great couple and anyone who knows me will know that I absolutely idolise Jodie.

A great night all in all, maybe it did suffer a little from not knowing what it wanted to be, I think they planned to have an Alan Carr-esque chat with all of the guests over an amusing drink but it kind of fell flat when they forget to do it after the first person. They'd put together a series of little challenges / tasks for people who had an Easter egg under their seat but even after we all had a rummage, two out of the five couldn't be found so the whole thing had to be hastily changed and I feel it would have been better had the whole thing just been cut. There was also a section where Nathan Amzi had to sing a song in the style of a certain performer as dictated by one of the Easter egg holders, but it was a bit embarrassing because Nathan didn't actually know most of the songs, and neither did the MD, I think Zizi Strallen jumping in to duet with him saved it though.

Oh, and Amber Riley was in the audience supporting her fellow Dreamgirls. She was a bit diva afterwards though, she stood out in the foyer but made it clear that nobody was welcome to approach her by standing in a very tight group with her entourage and ignoring anyone who came close, and then after a few minutes got them to box her in as they went out the exit. Shame really, Caroline Flack managed to work her way through most of the audience for pictures and a chat, Amber could have at least smiled politely and said a general hello before going.