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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...
Speaking of rubbish service, A and I go to Balans cafe in Soho regularly. I am not sure why as the food is more likely to be awful, the people often in there are freaks (usually exes of A's who are now hustlers) and the service is mixed. The one thing going for it is the location and it is a great space. I think that's why we keep coming back.

Wednesday evening was a case in point. Early January they gave me a voucher which was a "buy one meal get one free" deal. The deal came with a whole series of catches however. You could only redeem the offer Mon-Wed between 5-11pm and the moon had to be in the seventh house and Jupiter aligned with Mars. The fine print was so amusing that I asked the waiter what we could get with this deal. Eventually after much haggling he told us that A's all day breakfast and my burger would cover the deal so we made the order.

A few minutes later the waiter came back to apologise and say that breakfasts were not part of the meal deal and that if we could use the voucher another time that would mean that he wouldn't have to pay for the breakfast. I was amazed that not only were the planets not in our favour for the deal, but the management were so cheap and such slave drivers that they wouldn't cover a £5 breakfast but make their wait staff pay for it. Rather than make the waiter work a full hour to pay for our meal we decided that we would have the common decency to try and use the voucher another time. As for the meal? It was edible this time...

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Play ball: Damn Yankees @LandorTheatre

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