My plans for my London trip are taking shape, and while I still want to explore the city and visit a few spots I’ve longed to see for a long time, it is shaping up to be my summer of theatre.

The whole reason why I’m going to London in the first place is that I managed to get a ticket for the highly sought-after performance of Hamlet at the Barbican, starring Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock, The Imitation Game).

Tickets for Hamlet went on sale in August 2014 and were sold out within 8 hours. That’s right, a Shakespeare play out-sold Beyoncé and Jay Z combined!

I do follow a few actors and actresses I like on Twitter. That’s how I found Louise Brealey (Sherlock / Delicious) tweeting about a play called Constellations, urging young theatre-goers to come and see her. It was said to have a very limited run, so I didn’t really have high hopes when I went to check out the website.

Turns out, it closes on August 1, the day I’ll get to London. And there were tickets available for the final performance! Plus, it’s at Trafalgar Studios, where I saw Martin Freeman in Richard III last July. It took me a while to find a ticket agent that would accept Paypal (seetickets does, if you’re after UK theatre tickets) but I got a ticket, figuring I might as well as the play sounds really nice, and Louise is a terrific actress.

That was the day before yesterday. I thought, one performance at the very start of my stay, and one at the end, both involving actors I like from Sherlock, this should be good.

And then yesterday, I saw that two more actors I like are on stage when I’m in London, and they’re in the same play. And the play is on during the week when I’ll be in London. So I used some of my birthday money to secure yet another theatre ticket, this time to see John Simm (Life on Mars / The Prey) and Mark Gatiss (Mapp & Lucia / Sherlock) in Three Days In The Country at the National Theatre.

Add to all of this two day trips – one to Cardiff to meet a friend and one to Brighton and to Lewes to look around and check out a record store I’ve wanted to go to for a while – and going to Sir Ian McKellen’s pub for the weekly Pub Quiz, my holiday will be packed. But my summer of theatre should also be unforgettable! It’s my treat for myself after all the hard work I put in for university.

And there will be at least 3 theatre reviews to come within the next month!