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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...

Theatre: Over There



Saturday evening I caught Over There, which is a short play having a short run at the Royal Court. The play by Mark Ravenhill, is an interesting enough premise. It is about identical twins separated when their mother flees with one of them to the west. Following the fall of East Germany they meet again. What then takes place is exploring the differences between two ways of life with a smattering of food play and matching underwear thrown in for good measure.

The battle of ideas, socialism versus capitalism and consumerism are brought to the fore and the acting by Harry Treadaway and Luke Treadaway was excellent. Actually at times you did feel for them as the play became more and more harrowing and they had to do weirder and weirder stuff in their matching underwear. I also wondered whether the play could have benefited from more creative direction and imaginative lighting. At times it also felt like it was revisiting the "shock and awe" of Shopping and Fucking. But I guess that at a running length of 65 minutes we can't have everything.

This is part of a series of plays to commemorate 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall and runs until later this month. Here's hoping that there are more of these short plays in future. It is great stuff and even if you don't entirely get the matching underwear and food smears, it can be over before you have to think too much about it...

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Play ball: Damn Yankees @LandorTheatre

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