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Life upon the wicked stage: Already Perfect at Kings Head Theatre

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Performing two shows a day on a Broadway run sounds exhausting enough. But when you’ve just had a not-so-great matinee and are having a crisis of confidence, I would assume the last thing you’d want is to confront your past. Yet that’s the situation in Already Perfect, writer-performer Levi Kreis’s slightly autobiographical journey of confronting the past and his younger self. With a series of toe-tapping and emotional songs in a sleek production, you’re invited to experience someone else’s therapy session. And with a show title called Already Perfect, you know what kind of session this is going to be. It makes for a show where nothing is left unsaid, even if it is unnecessary,  unbelievable or best left on a greeting card. It’s currently playing at the King’s Head Theatre .  The story begins in his dressing room after a matinee, with Kreis alone. The show didn’t go so well. Struggling after being dumped by a lover, pressure mounting on the evening show being filmed for poster...

Gone to the dogs: The Border @TCLive


You know things have really gone to the dogs when four-legged friends are being rounded up and used as collateral. The dogs are used by migrants to pay to escape to a better life in East Oolia. Such is the slightly absurd but strangely familiar tale called The Border by Afsaneh Gray. It’s just finished playing at the Peckham Theatre but continues touring other sites and schools.

It opens with a young girl from the fictitious town of East Oolia called Julia. She’s just lost her dog as a border wall went up to divide East and West Oolia, and he ended up on the wrong side of the fence. The mayor did it to deliver on an election promise and to stop those West Oolians taking jobs from the East Oolians (or something like that). As Julia embarks on a quest to find her dog, she stumbles into a divided country. Her own family is divided, and immigration and crime (in the form of dog theft), is spiralling out of control.

Things get really interesting towards the end when the actors break the fourth wall and ask the audience about where they get their political views. Naturally being in the comfort and surroundings of the inner London the bubble, you can imagine what people would say about today’s politics. But the discussion quickly came to a consensus about the need to better understand different points of view and finding a middle ground. If only BBC Question Time could find such thoughtful audiences.

As an allegory for current day politics where hashtags and shouts of traitor replace thoughtful debate, it’s funny and engaging. As the dogs from the show say, all they’re after is “a patch a grass to piss on.” Maybe that’s a philosophy we could all try and live with instead of trying to keep pissing on each other.

Directed by Natalie Wilson, The Border continues touring schools and venues across the UK. Check their website for details.

⭐️⭐️⭐️



Photos by Jack Barnes

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