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Bit parts: Garry Starr Performs Everything @swkplay

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Garry Starr Performs Everything is a bare-bones (and bare buttocks) tribute to the theatre. Theatre may be in trouble, and audiences are down, but Garry Starr aims to save the theatre and bring back to the masses every style of theatre possible. As long as each style involves wearing a transparent white leotard or a skimpy thong. And tassels. It's part comedy, part physical comedy and part perv at Gary's physical prowess. The sentiment "if you've got it, flaunt it" applies here. So here we are with a show that has been around for some years and is having its first proper London run at the Southwark Playhouse (Borough) through Christmas. The premise is that Garry Starr (played by Damien Warren-Smith) has left the Royal Shakespeare Company over artistic differences. He is now on a mission to save the theatre from misrepresentation and worthy interpretations by doing things such as a two-minute Hamlet, recreating scenes from a Pinter play using unsuspecting audience

Soundtracks: Hairspray

After Friday night's jet-lag cure I had to go and pick up the Hairspray soundtrack on Saturday. Movie soundtracks used to be crap compared to original cast albums (I believe this is the correct terminology for afficianados out there) but Hairspray follows the more recent tradition of being pretty darn good. It was refreshing to be back in a music shop that didn't just offer Michael Buble as its specialities.

Mind you I did raise the point that the shop did not stock a lot of the new Australian musical titles that I heard while I was down under. After describing songs about shaving your balls and a musical about a gay love triangle set in a fun fair there was general concensus that some CDs are best left in the antipodes (or to be more accurate, in Melbourne)...

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Opera and full frontal nudity: Rigoletto

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Fantasies: Afterglow @Swkplay

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Play ball: Damn Yankees @LandorTheatre

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Damn Yankees at the Landor Theatre is one hell of a fun, sexy show. A great cast of dancers and singers give this show about a man who sells his soul to get on his beloved baseball team (and give them a chance of winning) new legs and balls. It also helps to up the ante with the sexiness with some healthy doses of cleavage and legs (and that's just the men). The musical is a retelling of the Faust story set in the 1950s when the New York Yankees dominated the game.
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