"The evening went a long way to show just how strong a songwriter Kate was and how loved a person she was. The intimacy of her work, the domestic settings, the familiar feelings, combined with a lyrical incisiveness and absolute honesty meaning the sheer simplicity and strength shone through with a bright light through the varied interpretations and demonstrated what a huge contribution she made to the folk music tradition. The grace under pressure shown by sister Anna, an integral part of so many of the numbers and the courage shown by the other participants, especially her family members, in sharing this moment with us is something I will be forever grateful for and I hope they found some kind of catharsis in the experience." (Ian Foster, There Ought to Be Clowns)
The above quote is from one of the first pieces - maybe the very first - that I read by Ian Foster, published on his blog There Ought to Be Clowns. It's from his review of the "A Celebration of Kate McGarrigle" concert held at the Royal Festival Hall on 12 June 2010 as part of that summer's Richard Thompson-curated Meltdown Festival. Kate had died that January, and a version of the show would go on to be performed in NYC the following year, as captured in Lian Lunson's documentary Sing Me The Songs That Say I Love You.
Ian, I'd later learn, had been lucky enough to win tickets to the concert's soon sold-out RFH debut, and his beautiful review captivated me with its heartfelt, emotional tone and tributes to many performers I loved myself.
We got in touch, and met up for the first time in September 2010. And I soon found that I loved Ian every bit as much as his writing. Adored him, in fact.
 |
| Ian, 2011 |
Maybe most losses are at some level a shock. But the news of Ian's death on 25th February this year, at just 46 years of age, has blindsided and wrenched me as deeply as any I've ever experienced. I don't really know what to do to get through it, to be honest. So I'm going to write something here, on the platform that first connected us, to try to pay tribute to a wonderful, hilarious, talented, kind, resourceful and complicated person who impacted and enriched my life, and those of so many others, in ways I'm still realising 16 years on.
2010. It was what's now referred to as "the time of the blogs". I'd set this one up a couple of years before after being coerced into teaching some undergraduate Media Studies courses and deciding that I really needed some practical experience of what I was talking about. It then became a place to put reviews and share links and other writing.
Ian had started his blog as a project following a break-up, and to keep a record of his theatre-going in London, where he'd moved a while before (he'd grown up in a village near Wigan, and went to university in Scotland). His theatre-going was becoming - to put it mildly - more and more frequent. Funnily enough, we both chose song lyrics for our blog names - he from Stephen Sondheim, me from Tori Amos.
Ian later encouraged me to join Twitter, and while my experience there was always very mixed, there's no doubt it was a better time for the site. There was a sense of theatre community and support before the whole thing gradually degenerated into a swirling, toxic cesspool. As the Timothée Chalamet ballet/opera and Jessie Buckley anti-cat backlash battles currently rage online for 5 minutes, I can hear Ian saying, in his inimitable, wry way: "Oh God, what are we meant to be outraged about this morning?"
Ian was much more dedicated, focused and ambitious as a blogger than I was. But I think it's important that we knew each other through our writing first, and remained each other's faithful, appreciative readers, always. Looking back now, I think we inspired each other a bit - he to write more frequently about films, me to write more often about theatre.
For sure, my theatre-going, which had been quite intense in the early 2000s but had tailed off by the end of the decade, soared again after meeting Ian. He was always wonderfully generous in offering invitations and 'Plus Ones,' and his appetite for taking in new productions was voracious.
"I'm out seeing things most nights," he told me when we first met. Two-show days were common for him, and he'd travel widely across town, and quite often across the country, to see stuff. Later on, as the reputation of his blog grew, and he became a fan of Toneelgroep Amsterdam's work, he'd be invited to review shows there, as well as to Paris, plus a trip to New York in late 2014. He really went global! That he did this, and turned out detailed, funny, insightful reviews while also holding down a full-time job, is a marvel.
 |
| Ian meets Kieran Bew in Bath, summer 2014 |
The first show we saw together was totally, wonderfully unhip - a touring production of The Rivals at Richmond Theatre, at which we chuckled in surprise at the entrance applause for Penelope Keith (and then joined in with it ourselves). We started travelling to see shows together quite early in our acquaintance - Ed Hall's Shakespeare company Propeller in Guildford and Sheffield; the brilliant Terence Rattigan season at Chichester in 2011; Therese Raquin in Bath in 2014. Seeking out Wetherspoon pubs for drinks and lunches, and charity shops to find some obscure CDs, became a tradition in each and every place we visited. Wonderful times.
 |
| Bath, again |
We didn't always have the same tastes. He liked classic musicals more than me, and was much more of a fan of that set of British male writers (Nick Payne, Jack Thorne, Mike Bartlett, James Graham) that I've never quite been able to distinguish from each other. I could no more convince him to love Ibsen than he could get me to consistently enjoy the work of one of his favourite directors, Ivo van Hove.
But when we did connect over something it was deep and intense and bonding. "Being able to talk about movies with someone, to share the giddy, high excitement you feel, is enough for a friendship," wrote Pauline Kael. That was true for Ian and I across all the arts. Ian didn't believe in guilty pleasures; if he responded to something it was wholeheartedly and unabashedly - and he saw no distinctions between so-called high and low culture. I loved how open he was to it all.
Sharing things we loved was crucial to our relationship from the start. He introduced me to one of his favourite musicals, the brilliant Avenue Q, and I introduced him to Propeller's productions. I went to Stratford for the first time ever with him (for a disappointing Merry Wives of Windsor); to the Globe for the first time for a magical Much Ado About Nothing ... and I fainted next to him on the second visit there on a blistering hot day in July 2011 watching Dr. Faustus.
I tried to make a list of the shows we saw together and it's way in the hundreds.
We just went to so much: bad touring Ayckbourns, transcendent Russian Shakespeares,
indifferent revivals (Peter Hall's dull Twelfth Night) and exquisite ones (Anna Christie at the Donmar and A Delicate Balance at the Almeida, which we stood for at the end, even if no one else did). All these memories are so vivid.
There were big West End musicals (I saw Wicked for the first time with him) and tiny Union Theatre ones, and two touring Steel Magnolias (in 2012 and 2023). There was Priscilla Presley being endearingly befuddled in panto (many years later we'd still chuckle over her delivery of the punchlines "Olly Murs" and "Nandos"). There was day-seating of The Children's Hour, and Audience Club tickets for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, and there was Bette and Joan at the Arts.
 |
| Salt, Root and Roe (Photo: Bronwen Sharp) |
There were theatre quizzes, blogger meet-ups, and there was even Strictly Come Dancing in 3D. The Maids on my birthday in 2016. And there were beautiful new plays, like Tim Price's Salt Root and Roe in the tiny Trafalgar Studio 2, with Anna Carteret and Anna Calder-Marshall playing sisters, which probably few people remember now, but which are engraved on my heart, in part, through the experience of seeing them, and loving them, with Ian. There are few theatres - in London and beyond - that I don't associate with him.
A huge shared love was Tori Amos and Samuel Adamson's magnificent musical The Light Princess in 2013 and 2014. "I've already cried three times," he texted me from the interval of the second preview. "A triumph, an absolute triumph". "Althea" and "Coronation" were his favourite pieces from the show. Later on in 2014, I surprised him by becoming a fellow fan of another too-short-lived new British musical, Made in Dagenham. "I do love it when you love things," I remember him saying, eyes twinkling.
I loved it when he texted me in intervals, unable to contain his excitement about what he was seeing. The last time he did that, I think, was at Beth Steel's family drama Till the Stars Come Down at the NT in early 2024, another show we both embraced wholeheartedly. His messages read: "I'm in the sex corner!" and "Aunty Carol in all the plays please" (Well, if you know, you know.) I remember, too, how proud he was to get on the NT's press list back in 2016 and to start seeing his first official-invite shows there.
About actors we almost always agreed. New casting announcements were eagerly shared, and talking about performers together was always delightful. A partial list of favourites: Helen McCrory, Cate Blanchett, Kieran Bew, Dominic Tighe, Ruth Wilson, Lesley Manville, Ben Daniels, Anthony Calf, Noma Dumezweni, Lucy Cohu, Nigel Lindsay, Sinéad Matthews, Jonathan Groff.
We saw films together too, an odd mix of super-mainstream and art-house stuff: Hanna, first, on his 32nd birthday, and later Walking on Sunshine (much better than Mamma Mia!, IMO), In Secret, Bright Days Ahead, Stranger by the Lake, The Duke of Burgundy, Into the Woods, the Whitney Houston biopic, L'Immensita, and, most poignantly of all I think now, Andrew Haigh's All of Us Strangers.
The last one, about a year ago at BFI, was The Last Showgirl, which neither of us much liked.
Being more or less the same age as someone is no guarantee of fellowship, but for Ian and I it was. As we got to know each other more, I think we were both surprised and delighted by how many of our 80s-childhood reference points matched up, whether it was being terrified at Return to Oz as kids or buying Tiffany and Debbie Gibson records.
I never met any members of his family, but I felt like I knew them from his warm remarks about them: his Mum and Dad, his sisters Jane and Cath, his niece and nephew, and his Aunty Jean, who accompanied him on theatre trips when visiting and was often mentioned on the blog. He'd tell me about their large-group family holidays, and recently he was proud of Cath's success on Only Connect. He met my Mum once, before a Light Princess matinee, and greeted her with a classic Ian comment: "so, what will happen if you don't like this show?"
There were boozy nights, fun and gossip and shared stories. Mix CDs exchanged. Outside of theatre, there was XXL several times, and, once, a Kew Gardens visit when I met him with his work colleagues. There was one time when we didn't see the scheduled show at all, but just went to the pub and talked and talked instead ("You know, we should skip stuff more often," he said).
 |
| Bloggers united in booze: John Gray (Going Gently), Ian and me |
Few friends have made me laugh more than Ian. The last time I saw him, 30th December, with Jason Roush (of popsublime) - only just over two months ago, my God - he said something that made me stop in the street, doubled over with laughter. His humour was quick, irreverent and often razor-sharp. In the early days - full disclosure - it could lead to some misunderstandings or hurt feelings. That he could be so kind and then so caustic could be confusing. To be honest, I don't think he liked me, at first, as much as I liked him. But all of this got ironed out as the years passed, as we saw more of each other, changed, travelled together, and grew closer. He included me in his "10 Questions for 10 Years of Theatre Blogging" feature in 2019 and what he wrote about our friendship there touched me a lot.
When I told him, on the night of that skipped show in 2016, more about my plans to move to Poland, I realised he was surprised and perhaps a bit disappointed, even as he encouraged me to make the needed change. In turn, I encouraged him to visit, but, for whatever reason, he didn't - and that became one of our running jokes ("Next year then?" "For sure.")
But usually when I was back in London we'd meet, and those times continued to mean so much. In 2021, still lockdownish, I met him by the Thames, and took along Michael Grandage's huge book about his time running the Donmar. We sat there flicking through it, reminiscing about things we'd seen there. In 2022, a summer of separate traumas for us both, we sat together on the grass on a hot day on Richmond Green; I can't speak for him but I know I came away from that meeting feeling restored to life.
 |
| Summer 2022 |
We did a nostalgic two-show day in February 2024 - seeing The Human Body at the Donmar and the West End transfer of Standing at the Sky's Edge. I remember how proud and pleased he seemed that I'd written the programme essay for the Donmar show, and how happy his pride made me feel.
We said an awful lot over the years but now I wish we'd said so much more.
Since hearing the news of his passing, just trying to survive the days, I've seen three films - Winter of the Crow, The Bride!, and Plainclothes - and cried at each one because each had some association with him (when Winter of the Crow was being made two years ago in Warsaw, I messaged him: "Manville's here making a film!"). And I've come out of each one thinking: "Oh, I want to talk to Ian about this."
I've tried writing this calmly. But what I really want to do - the actual honest thing I want to do - is run outside and scream and cry because he's gone - because one of the best friends I've ever had in the world is gone.
My deepest condolences go to his family and friends at this time, and to anyone who loved him, and is feeling the pain and shock of his loss.
 |
| One of Ian's blogging awards |
If you weren't fortunate enough to know Ian, there's his website. Please check it out. It's an amazing, unique record of almost 20 years of dedicated theatre-going, and of film and TV and music, and much more besides. It's a treasure trove, a really vital, generous body of work, and should be archived and preserved.
Start anywhere, and you'll find something to cherish.
I love his more personal reviews most: for instance, his take on Nina Raine's Tribes, where he addressed his deafness, a daily challenge which he scarcely mentioned, or his review of Hello Dolly. I cried reading that one when he published it, and right now I couldn't bring myself to read it again. But I will.
When I heard the news that Groff was coming over to do the RSC's As You Like It later this year, one of the people I first thought to tell was Ian, of course. I think of all the shows coming up he'd love to see, all those we won't now hear his thoughts about, and it's heart-breaking.
 |
| Southbank, 2024 |
Ian was a unique and original person. He was talented in so many ways, and he certainly changed my life and made me braver. To refer to him in the past tense still seems unfathomable to me, and utterly obscene. His death is tragic. I know a day won't pass when I don't think about him.
The pain is raw, and any healing seems a long way off. The only comfort I can take - and I'm sure so many others will feel the same - is that of having known him, spent time with him, and loved him. To use his own words, it's "something I will be forever grateful for."
Thank you, Ian. Rest in Peace, dear friend. We will never forget you. 🌹
 |
| Duke of York's Theatre, 2025 |
A song.
