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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

Dire sheep: Big Brother Blitzkrieg @KingsHeadThtr


It seems like a great concept: after many rejections from Vienna's art school and a botched suicide attempt, Hitler wakes up in the Big Brother House.

But what could pass for a five minute sketch is dragged out for an excruciating seventy minutes with few laughs.


Satire I thought was meant to be funny. At least it is in Chaplin's The Great Dictator and pretty much anything from Mel Brooks. Instead we have an earnest and unconvincing argument that we all get swept away by charisma in the end.

If the intention is to explore what does reality television do for politicians the answer from this seems to be not a lot. The programme notes Donald Trump is using reality television fame to run for President. But he is also spending a lot of his own personal fortune on doing that (and the jury is still out on how well that is going for him).

The big brother household assembled seems a bit odd as well. They look too old to be contestants. And if they are meant to spoofs of media personalities it is too unclear to be be funny. Besides, given the average age of any Big Brother winner is 25, I would have thought Hitler had no chance...

Big Brother Blitzkrieg runs at the Kings Head Theatre until 30 January.

⭐︎⭐︎

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