Mezzanine Theater Diary 4+

A Theatre Goer Must-have!

This is such an easy way to keep track of shows I’ve seen, and not just on Broadway or in the West End! It’s super easy to add custom shows, so even that black box in Atlanta or second National Tour in Colorado can get a diary entry. Perfect for jotting down notes on shows, recording seat location (which is so helpful when booking future shows) and rating what you see! Also a huge fan of the map feature to see all of the places I’ve seen shows and a handy graph to see how this year stacks up against others. Warning: this app is addictive, in the best way, so once you start adding shows you’ll want to go back and record everything you’ve seen!

I am obsessed

When I moved away from home a few years ago, I made the mistake of throwing out playbills and ticket stubs (in an attempt to declutter) and it’s something I’ve regretted since!! Then I found mezzanine and I have had some fun filling in my diary with shows, reviews and even pictures of shows that I’ve seen. I’ve searched through photos and past calendars to make sure I’m putting in everything ha. I look forward to seeing what more this app will do. I like that it doesn’t feel identical to Fb, instagram or other social media apps, I hope it stays that way. This feels different!

Developer Response ,

This is a really touching review, thank you!

Designed for NY theater only

This works well for Broadway shows. But it is surprisingly undeveloped for regional theater, even for major regional theater cities like Washington DC; and it also lacks some very basic interface features.

For DC, the app’s database doesn’t have even recent productions of major plays by popular regional theatres. It doesn’t even prepopulate the “theater” entry field for major regional theatres like Studio Theater or Arena Stage. So those theatre names and productions have to be manually entered.

Even worse, manual entries don’t appear to be saved. So each time I have to again manually type in the name of the theater.

The app doesn’t even appear to have a pull-down list of cities to select. Those too have to be typed in manually over and over again.

The lack of stored cities and regional theaters—and the failure to save even manual entries—not only makes using the app more cumbersome, but also introduces needless inconsistency and errors (if, for instance, I spell it “Washington, DC” one time and “Washington, D.C.” another time).

I think right now this app is best advertised as a way for New York theater fans to track what they’ve seen. It doesn’t seem to be minimally useful for productions outside of NY; it lacks even remedial features for regional theater, even though most theater happens outside of NY.

Developer Response ,

Hi lip16, thanks for the feedback. As a DC theatergoer myself I'm working hard to improve the available productions outside of NYC. Currently Mezzanine has over 1,500 productions available but more are being added every day. In the meantime, as you mentioned, productions can be entered manually. And since version 1.1 Mezzanine will let you select from the theaters and cities you have entered used previously, so no more repeat or inconsistent data entry.

Hopefully Mezzanine becomes more useful for you over time. Thanks for trying it out.

Ben