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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
Musical: Mary Poppins - supercalisassystarturn

The opportunity came up to see Mary Poppins The Musical Friday night so I took it. Now that Billy Elliot has opened it will lose some of its "must see" status no doubt, but it is a very classy show (well, classy for something that is part music hall, part panto and part dance musical) using some of the best talent in the UK. Of note:
  • This was a dark and sassy Mary Poppins. Laura Michelle Kelly as the lead was quite sinister dispensing with a nasty nanny, and also siccing the children's toys on them when they annoyed her. The latter must have led to the warning against bringing very young children to the theatre, but for a show that clocks up three hours, there should be another warning that only children on Ritalin would last that long without getting bored.
  • Kelly's performance however is great and it is easy to see how people are finally seeing her as the next big thing. When she isn't on the stage however, it isn't as much fun, the character of the parents are just annoying, and the cook and the servant are meant to provide the comic relief but strain to do so.
  • The show is not a duplication of the movie as it also goes back to the original stories of PJ Travers. Apart from making the story a lot darker (and at times less coherent) it enables things such as the animated sequences in the park being replaced by dancing statues.
  • New songs have been written and the old ones have been adapted (and lyrics completely replaced). This makes for a much better musical story, although alas "Sister Suffragette" (among others) gets cut...
  • No musical nowadays is complete without one cast member flying off into the wings. This time, there was a half-baked excuse since Mary is supposed to fly, and so she did... Three times. Each time the audience applauded, and loudest the last time as she flew over some of the audience in the stalls as she left Cherry Tree Lane for good. Nothing like an actor suspended by cables to get the punters excited. They do it in Billy Elliot too (for some reason).
  • The other big event is in the second act number "Step in Time" when Gavin Lee tapdances upside down on the proscenium. Tap dancing upside down is probably something that won't catch on as much as flying about the stage, but it fitted with the story and again got the punters awfully excited.
After a while it is easy to get jaded with all these theatrical tricks and quality shows... But for £50 you get your money's worth of thrills in this show. Now if future revisions trim it a little here and there it will be even better... It no doubt has a long future ahead of it...

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