Featured Post

Prayers and thoughts: The Inseparables @Finboroughtheatre

Image
The Inseparables brings Simone de Beauvoir’s posthumously published novel to life. It traces a lifelong friendship between Sylve and Andrée, two unconventional girls who grew up in a stifling world where being a woman meant getting married or entering a convent. With a quick pace and engaging performances from the two leads, it is a journey back into the 20th century that captures two unconventional women trapped in a conventional world that will have you reflecting on how much or little things have moved on in the last century. It’s currently playing at the Finborough Theatre .  We’re introduced to Sylve praying for her country, France, to be saved from the war and indoctrinated into the world of faith and obedience. But too smart for all that, her life was full of detached guilt and boredom. But when she meets Andrée, a new arrival at her school, she is struck by how different she is from everyone else. She was burned in a fire and had a passion for life that nobody else she knew...

Theatre: Tomorrow Morning

Tomorrow Morning has been playing at the Landor Theatre in Clapham North for the past month and is a great little show. It is a four-hander musical about a young couple (well sort of young since Jon Lee is one half of it) getting married, and an older couple getting divorced. I don't want to say the second couple is old as it appears the couple getting divorced are no older than me and have fabulous jobs and tight fitting suits. Despite the divorce and the child custody issues you still get a sense they are living the dream though slim cut tailoring...

The show was first presented a few years ago and has gone through some revisions since then. Here it is presented as a very slick engaging production with an incredible cast. Heading it up with Jon Lee is the lovely Julie Atherton along with Grant Neal and Yvette Robinson. The performances make this show very memorable and the production is one of the best looking I have seen at the Landor. The set comprises of a series of sofas and cupboards that open and reveal things about the characters. Although maybe all those recent home improvements I have been undertaking has led me to develop in unhealthy fascination in cupboard doors and sofas that look like they were from Ikea...

The music is reminiscent of Sondheim and Jason Robert Brown and shows like I Love You Because and I Love You, Your Perfect Now Change. Actually after listening to them all they all seem to start to share the same set of values (and plots) it made me wonder whether slightly quirky heterosexual musicals with mild angst is an emerging sub-genre.

It runs until 13 November so catch the last few performances of this production while you can... Julie Atherton's latest CD was available in the foyer or iTunes and it isn't a bad little collection either...

Popular posts from this blog

Opera and full frontal nudity: Rigoletto

Image
David McVicar's oddly modern production of Rigoletto is back at the Royal Opera House . This modern and minimalist dark production has evolved over the years. It is better lit now but there is still an orgy and full frontal nudity within the first thirty minutes. This enables anyone not in the stalls an excellent view of a flaccid penis and a nicely shaved bush. But as time goes it seems more and more superfluous to the main focus of this tragedy of a court jester who seeks revenge. Here is hoping that the production continues to evolve... Conductor John Eliot Gardiner keeps the music well paced. Dimitri Platanias in the title role sounded great and received a rapturous applause for his interpretation of the role. You get a sense more of the doting father rather than the court jester or cursed man here. Vittorio Grigolo plays the Duke and sounds too lovely to be the cad the role calls for, but it is hard not to like when he is on stage anyway. And it is easier to understan...
Read more...

Fantasies: Afterglow @Swkplay

Image
Nowadays no self-respecting gay play can be staged without full frontal nudity of some kind. It feels like the default response for the modern gay play now that gay rights are no longer an issue .   Afterglow, currently playing at Southwark Playhouse , serves it up in spades. From the beginning, three men are in a bed, naked. There’s what appears to be a very brief exhalation of ecstasy, before the obligatory rush to the shower. But the gratuitous nudity and excellent performances can’t conceal this is a pretty conventional and predictable story about a fantasy couple.  The three men in the simultaneous orgasm at the start of the piece are Josh, Alex and Darius. Josh and Alex seem to live in a New York world where they can afford a rooftop apartment in Manhattan while holding jobs as a theatre director and a grad student in chemistry. As writer S. Asher Gelman based it on his own experiences, perhaps gay plays with full frontal nudity are the way to achieve financial ...
Read more...

Play ball: Damn Yankees @LandorTheatre

Image
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.
Read more...