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Bear with me: Sun Bear @ParkTheatre

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If The Light House is an uplifting tale of survival, Sarah Richardson’s Sun Bear gives a contrasting take on this. Sarah plays Katy. We’re introduced to Katy as she runs through a list of pet office peeves with her endlessly perky coworkers, particularly about coworkers stealing her pens. It’s a hilarious opening monologue that would have you wishing you had her as a coworker to help relieve you from the boredom of petty office politics.  But something is not quite right in the perfect petty office, where people work together well. And that is her. And despite her protesting that she is fine, the pet peeves and the outbursts are becoming more frequent. As the piece progresses, maybe the problem lies in a past relationship, where Katy had to be home by a particular hour, not stay out late with office colleagues and not be drunk enough not to answer his calls. Perhaps the perky office colleagues are trying to help, and perhaps Katy is trying to reach out for help. It has simple staging

Theatre: Legally Blonde



I finally managed to catch Legally Blonde this week, the musical that channels your inner high schoolgirl almost as successfully as Wicked (albeit without the thrillifying sets or the deafening music), but snaps to the energy of the cast, which still holds up well despite not having Oliver award-winning Sheridan Smith in it.
It is easy to see why the show won the Olivier over the other contenders as it is a lot more fun than Love Never Dies, although the only similarity this show has with Legally Blonde would be that both have their theatres are located on The Strand. And even though there are a few cringe worthy superfluous musical numbers that could have been cut to make the show sharper (and possibly funnier), composer and lyricist Laurence O'Keefe (of Batboy fame) knows how to give a show perk and a showstopper when it's called for.

Susan McFadden as Elle does a fine job in the lead role, and she has a strong supporting cast to back her up including Denise van Outen and a set of rather cute performing dogs.

It is all very light stuff, but the mostly female audience loved it, and as this show brings out your inner high schoolgirl it is hard to resist... It is booking until October some year in the future...

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Play ball: Damn Yankees @LandorTheatre

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