The Etties are simply our little bit of fun to round up the past twelve months. We’ve already announced (most of) the main awards for the shows themselves, but we also have a couple of fun awards for our reviewers. They are Best Review (shortlist to come soon) and The Above And Beyond Award.
The Above and Beyond Award is just what it says, for those reviewers who went above and beyond in 2022 for a variety of reasons. The only real criteria for nomination is that they reviewed at least ten shows. We’ll tell you more about the main reason each has been nominated below.
You can find out more about the Etties and all our other categories here.
We’ll announce all our winners on 18 January.
Dave Bushe
Nominated for being a one-man reviewing machine.
Dave joined us in 2022, and within a few weeks we had already realised he was quite the theatre addict. In fact he has proven to be a bit of a one-man reviewing machine. In 2022 he squeezed in a quite frankly crazy 70 reviews, and it’s already looking like that will be drawfed in 2023.
In addition to reviewing, Dave’s also been a great help in working on our website and some interviews, which frees up more time for us to edit all those damn reviews.
Lily Middleton
Nominated for fighting the corner of Musical Theatre.
As well as contributing a fantastic 27 reviews this year, Lily really is one of our musical experts. For certain people who will remain nameless within ET (you know who you are), musical theatre is a swear word. But Lily stands her ground and puts up with all the abuse she receives everytime she gets a little too excited about her next musical outing and going out of her way to stick up for them. She even braved the Excel Centre and thousands of other musical fans to check our Musical Con for us in October!
In addition to this, Lily is now our Head of Recruitment, taking on the fun role of onboarding all our new recruits. So if you happen to want to apply to be a reviewer with us (you can do so here), you’ll soon be hearing from Lily.
Marianna Meloni
Nominated for making Edinburgh happen year after year.
Marianna brings some Italian flair to ET. Ok, she may not have been around in London to do any reviews this year, but when it came to Edinburgh, she was right there again. It was due to Marianna we started doing our Edinburgh coverage a few years back and she has returned every year since. Spending three weeks there balancing work and fun, somehow finding the time to review 26 shows. We could share some stories of the weird and wild emails she was sending us by the end of the month when the madness started to creep in, but instead we’ll just say that without her we wouldn’t have managed to get others up to Edinburgh this year, which lead to us publishing an incredible 84 reviews, our best ever Fringe coverage.
Mary Pollard
Nominated for her editing prowess and for braving the worse show of the year.
First things first. Without Mary’s increcible contribution this year in editing around 80% of all our 543 reviews (our best year ever), we aren’t sure how we would have survived. Yet somehow inbetween all her editing duties, she also managed to review 58 shows, many of which were spent supporting Theatre for Young Audiences.
But beyond all that, Mary deserves her nomination simply for braving what was very clearly the worse theatre experience of the year, The Queen of Ocean, all three and a half hours of it!
Mike Carter
Nominated for consistently making us smile with his reviews.
Mike’s been with ET for a while now, and we’re so glad he stays. He consistently produces some wonderful and fun reviews as well as doing his best to encourage us all to go along to The Space, where he may or may not have a slight vested interest.
Nathan Blue
Nominated for services to keeping the mystery alive.
We call Nathan our man of mystery, because no one actually knows who he really is. But what we do know is that he can write a brilliant review, so the 13 he has contributed this year have all been treats. We’re not sure anyone else could slip the phrase “comfort wank” into a review so casually.
Zoe Pfaller
Nominated for getting into the real spirit of the Rocky Horror Show.
When we were invited to review The Rocky Horror Show, Zoe was overjoyed to be the lucky one set to go. We jokingly told her she could only go if she dressed up for the occasion, and wow, she didn’t fail us on that front, with the team at New Wimbledon Theatre even sending us a photo to prove she had gone full Rocky Horror for the evening! It was an effort that we really felt showed her commitment to the cause.
Special Mentions
We had 19 reviewers cover 10 or more shows this year, so a special mention as well to Anna Robinson, Matt Aldridge, Scott Wddell, Sara West, Dean Wood, Lucy Boardman, Charlotte Boreham, Kit Bromovsky, Gabriel Wilding, Xi Ye and M Jacob.
