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Wine time: The Frogs - Southwark Playhouse

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For a show called The Frogs, there isn’t much amphibian activity in the piece. But being a show with music by Stephen Sondheim, you could be mistaken for thinking it’s a critical theatrical piece. But like Sondheim’s final musical playing at the National Theatre, while it may not be a musical that fills you with provocative thoughts, it’s a fast-paced romp through hell and back to save the world for the sake of arts. With rousing choruses, thrilling choreography and plenty of cheap laughs, what more can you want from the theatre? It’s currently playing at the Southwark Playhouse (Borough) . There isn’t much to the plot, except that Dionysus (Dan Buckley), disillusioned by the state of a divided world, and his sidekick and slave, Xanthias (Kevin McHale), cross the river Styx to the underworld to find a great writer who they can return to the world to teach the world about life. He has his mind set on bringing back George Bernard Shaw until he hears the poetry of Shakespeare.  This v...
Music: The Fairy Queen (Purcell)

After Glyndebourne on Saturday I went to Royal Albert Hall on Sunday to see a BBC Proms concert of Purcell's The Fairy Queen. As it was a concert it was just the music (so it was only two hours) and it was a very enjoyable way to spend an early Sunday evening.

A had two tickets, one in the stalls and one in the circle. Rather than take up my suggestion of paper-scissors-rock for determining who sat where, he suggested that we swap seats at interval. That far more sensible suggestion turned out to be best as the seat in the circle provided a great vantage point to see everything, while the seat in the stalls was better for proximity.

Purcell in the cavernous space of the RAH may not be the best setting for this music, but it was nice to see it, and it reminded me that between now and mid-September I should be getting to more Proms concerts.

After the concert and as we left the hall to find somewhere to have supper, A spotted a few celebrities in the neighborhood, but I was too busy with those little Purcell ditties running about in my head to notice. Those things can seriously cause you to be distracted. Well that was my excuse for the evening...

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