Just over seventeen months after my last visit to a theatre and following not only a pandemic, but a personal period of prolonged ill-health as a result, there was obvious trepidation in taking my seat in a theatre again. Maybe what I needed was an uplifting gem of a show to truly get me back into the theatre fever. Step forward the bawdy and cursing joys of Gin Craze! This new musical from Royal & Derngate and China Plate is a co-production with English Touring Theatre that provides perhaps the perfect antidote to a dry period of theatre as the sloshing of gin and the tales of these ladies of gin lane thrills throughout. Leading our tale are gin entrepreneurs Mary (Aruhan Galieva) and Lydia (Paksie Vernon), both down on their luck for a mixture of reasons, but they club together to form an alliance in the burgeoning new world of gin, and battle the constant law changes that try to kerb the business. History says that at the time this musical is set, in the 18th century, the averag