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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
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Music meaning and laughs: Tiffany Graves in the house

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Closing out the season of Cabaret at Lauderdale House  on Highgate Hill, Tiffany Graves delivered a memorably funny and high spirited show last Sunday. Lauderdale House is a former private home that has been transformed into an arts and education centre and has been running Sunday afternoon events for some time. Graves delivered a wonderfully comedic and powerful collection of songs that she felt reflected her career, her friends and her relationships, which was at times hilarious enough to forget about the miserable weather outside.
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Ambiguity and postal orders: The Winslow Boy

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The Winslow Boy , currently playing at The Old Vic , is a lovely piece of entertainment about how a middle class family in Edwardian England risks everything to see that a mild injustice is overcome. But it is somewhat hard to sustain interest in its near three hour length when the characters are only defined by how they relate in society and legal arguments relate to a particularly obscure piece of Victorian law... The play tells the story of Ronnie Winslow, a fourteen year old Navy cadet who is accused of stealing a five shilling postal order. Without given the opportunity for representation, he is investigated and found guilty and his family is asked to withdraw him from the Royal Navy College. At the time there was no automatic right of appeal and so the play follows the attempts of the family to clear his name and the toll it takes upon them all.
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On a bad day: Darling of the Day

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It is appropriate that the Union Theatre , which has a reputation for fresh perspectives on old shows, has given Darling of the Day , a forgotten musical from the 1960s, its first European Revival. The show with music by Jule Styne ran on Broadway for only 31 performances and attempts to revive over the years have stalled. Perhaps the reason it has been ignored is that it is just not a fashionable show. The story revolves around a famous artist in Edwardian London who seizes an opportunity to assume the identity of his butler and fade away into an upper working class existence. The score isn't full of memorable songs, but with its take on old love (or rather two more mature leads who get married), the show is intriguing and mostly harmless fun.
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Curious and sweet: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

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It was an exciting and enjoyable opening night of the West End transfer of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time  earlier this week. Not just because of the various well-known faces and fans of the cast in the audience, but this is an intelligent and emotional play that is hard to resist. While I missed its run at  The National Theatre , you are swept up in the sensitive story of a boy with behavioural problems and his impact on the family. And there is a star performance from Luke Treadaway as 15-year-old Christopher Boone, a maths genius with Asperger's Syndrome. Treadaway inhabits the character and draws out his sensitivities and his vulnerabilities. At times it is exhausting to watch. And as he is a bit of a star (alongside his twin brother ), his female fans in the audience were quite excited when he takes his shirt off. The character may be fifteen, but the demands on the role require a pretty fit actor, so be prepared for audience members enjoying the sight o
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Fragmented blood and lust: Written on Skin fires

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There was style, passion and violence going around in spades at the Royal Opera's premiere of George Benjamin's new work, Written on Skin ,  Friday evening. Directed by Katie Mitchell, it is a big lavish production where angels look down on the unfolding story based upon the old fable Le Coeur Mangé (The Eaten Heart). It is a story about a powerful protector who engages an artist to create a work to celebrate his life and in doing so awakens his submissive wife. Upon discovery of this infidelity he plots his revenge. It is a short piece of only ninety minutes with no interval, but it is perfectly formed. For an opera about despair and unlocking beauty the music is evocatively layered. There are no big arias and much wailing at times but bit by bit the music serves to build the drama and tension of the piece. By the time of the conclusion and act of revenge the production has taken you to another world of beauty and wonder.
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Another look at bathroom mind games: Mydidae

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The last time I saw Mydidae in December the full frontal nudity seemed a bit of a novelty. Now a few months later and transferred to the Trafalgar Studios , it is not the only show in the West End where the actors bare all , but they are probably still the only ones with a fully-plumbed bathroom. While the prospect of seeing actors live and vulnerable is no doubt enough to arouse the interest of the punters, it is not all cheap laughs. Innocent and amusing banter soon becomes a voyeuristic look into shattered dreams and provocations.
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Endless banter: Just another night with Lady Rizo

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Lady Rizo is making her London debut playing downstairs at the Soho Theatre and amusing and enthralling audiences with her mix of incredible vocals and offbeat humour. She tells the audience frequently that she is a chanteuse, and it is her singing rather than her comic ability which is what you should see her for. She is more mildly mischievous than funny. Her banter last Wednesday tended to get in the way of the music... Even if it involved a fascinating discussion with a lady in the front row who disclosed she raped a man at a heavy metal festival when she was sixteen, it still was very mildly risque fare.
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