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Eyes, hair, mouth: Darkie Armo Girl at Finborough Theatre

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Darkie Armo Girl, Karine Bedrossian’s electrifying one-woman show, commands attention from the moment it begins. First performed in 2022 and revived last year, it now returns for extra performance and it's an event not to miss. The show takes you through the thrills and horrors of a hectic life. She struts, shimmies, and taunts while revealing some horrific truths. She is such an irresistible storyteller that you find yourself hooked. The story is one of fame, glamour, abuse, self-harm, and suicide. If that subject matter doesn't sound like your cup of tea, you haven't seen it delivered with such high energy and provocation. It's currently at the Finborough Theatre . The show's title refers to a slur a popular girl at school once called her. Her ancestry is Armenian, and her parents were from Cyprus, where they fled the civil war and arrived in the UK with nothing. Shortly after she was born in Roehampton. The birth was an emergency C-section that left the baby and ...

Theatre: Bright Lights Big City

Sunday afternoon was a chance to venture to Hoxton Hall to see the musical Bright Lights, Big City. For the second day running, this was another great cast in a a great production. The music (which I had not previously heard) wasn't that bad either.

Musicals usually have a set format but this is not your traditional quirky heterosexual musical, but a hard core, full-on journey through one man's drug-fuelled sordid week in the eighties. Naturally big hair and big glasses abound, but with the everything eighties seemingly fashionable again it all seemed a natural fit in the surrounds of Hoxton and the East End. It was like spending a cool afternoon in your living room with a concept album that came to life. The cast were all great, particularly Paul Ayres as the lead, Jamie, and Jodie Jacobs as Vicky.

Watching it with Johnnyfox, he was less sure about to make of it. He was off that night to see the concert version of Company so I thought it might be helpful to make a comparison between the two shows as they are broadly similar. Just instead of:
Phone rings
Door chimes
In comes
Company
It was more like:
Lousy job
Wear shades
Snort coke
Eat pussy
There's something in that list we all can relate to. Catch it this month.

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