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Bit parts: Garry Starr Performs Everything @swkplay

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Garry Starr Performs Everything is a bare-bones (and bare buttocks) tribute to the theatre. Theatre may be in trouble, and audiences are down, but Garry Starr aims to save the theatre and bring back to the masses every style of theatre possible. As long as each style involves wearing a transparent white leotard or a skimpy thong. And tassels. It's part comedy, part physical comedy and part perv at Gary's physical prowess. The sentiment "if you've got it, flaunt it" applies here. So here we are with a show that has been around for some years and is having its first proper London run at the Southwark Playhouse (Borough) through Christmas. The premise is that Garry Starr (played by Damien Warren-Smith) has left the Royal Shakespeare Company over artistic differences. He is now on a mission to save the theatre from misrepresentation and worthy interpretations by doing things such as a two-minute Hamlet, recreating scenes from a Pinter play using unsuspecting audience

Opera: La Sonnambula


 Opening night of La Sonnambula at the Royal Opera was an opportunity for Eglise Gutiérrez to show off some incredibly light yet lingering high notes in this piece about jealousy, mistaken identity... And sleepwalking. It is a mildly silly opera but the piece by Bellini with its music and creative forces at work make you overlook these things and the let the action unfold in what looks like a large railway station foyer.

The cast are great and rising star tenor Celso Albelo makes his Royal Opera debut as the jealous composer Elvino. But the real passion and drama was perhaps watching Gutiérrez and conductor Daniel Oren create music together. It was exhausting yet exhilarating and what any good night at the opera surely is about. Nothing too serious but lovely music set to a mildly amusing farce, complete with a domineering mother. It runs through to November 18.

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Play ball: Damn Yankees @LandorTheatre

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