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Prayers and thoughts: The Inseparables @Finboroughtheatre

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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: Crazy For You (or maybe slightly ambivalent)


Hopefully it will be a while before there is another revival of Crazy For You, which has its final week at Regents Park Open Air Theatre this week.

The cast are terrific and so is the dancing. Sean Palmer and Clare Foster make terrific leads and keep things as fresh as they could be. But this is probably the kind of show that needs constant revisions and rewrites to stay fresh. While it is an update of the Gershwin musical Girl Crazy, twenty years on it too feels dated. The cheesy book linking to even cheesier lesser known Gershwin works quickly becomes tedious.

The "open air" doesn't help the ambience either... Nor does the Roy Rogers inspired set. Perhaps another Gershwin show, Porgy and Bess might lend itself better to the open air environment... Although London summers are not quite the hot temperatures of South Carolina, there no doubt could be some effective rain sequences for the hurricane scenes... Until then, marvel at the cast, great costumes and some rather nifty footwork... It ends 10 September...

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Opera and full frontal nudity: Rigoletto

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Play ball: Damn Yankees @LandorTheatre

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