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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

Theatre: High Society

It was practically a full house on Thursday evening at High Society playing Upstairs at the Gatehouse. That meant that Johnnyfox and I had to sit in the front row to enjoy this high energy and high furniture moving production. It must be hard to work in these productions to dance and sing your heart out, and then have to move the sofas about. When you're not worrying that they will drop a lampshade on you or kick you in the face, the cast in this show are great. And since the music is Cole Porter it is fairly enjoyable stuff it makes it hard to not enjoy it at some level...

On another level it is just an awful musical with a dull book and vaguely appealing characters. It probably was a bad idea to see a show with Johnnyfox that has lines that mention something about stroking her pussy out the back as well. And it wasn't helped by the decision to transplant the setting to England, perhaps so we didn't have to cringe at English actors attempting American accents. The ladies around us in the audience apart from being sympathetic to our tittering also provided some added amusement with their reactions to what was going on onstage, particularly as the evening wore on as being a theatre pub you can bring your drinks into the theatre. They were looking suspiciously like hard core Gatehouse goers... And they had sat well away from where the furniture kept flying in and out. Sort of worth catching... if you steer clear of the exits. Also avoid Finsbury Park when heading home as the vomit matches the floor there and you can go for a bit of a slide... Although Johnnyfox thought that was a tad more entertaining than the show we saw...

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Play ball: Damn Yankees @LandorTheatre

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