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Iron Maidens: Iron Fantasy at Soho Theatre

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Two women chase the elusive six-pack in Iron Fantasy, only to embark on an unexpected journey exploring what it truly means to be strong in today’s world. In a culture that demands visible strength and power, they subject themselves to lifting, protein powder-guzzling, and raw-egg drinking. Interestingly, consuming raw eggs elicited many squeamish reactions from members of the audience. None has obviously been to Cabaret to see Sally Bowles guzzle prairie oysters. But in the search for the attributes that make someone strong, a little more is revealed about being a young woman in the modern world. And that strength comes from a number of ways. It’s currently playing at the Soho Theatre .  It’s part performance, part musical, and part interviews, as writer-performers Shamira Turner and Eugénie Pastor, who make up the theatre performance duo She Goat, don a variety of silly costumes and play a range of musical instruments on their journey researching strength, fighting, and pumping i...

Theatre: Excellent Choice

Excellent Choice - a two-man show by Rob Hayes - is a brief and (ahem) palatable choice to start the evening. Part of the final week of the Vault Festival at the Old Vic Tunnels at Waterloo Station, it is a funny and dark half hour show that goes down very well. The theatre space being slightly damp and a former office within the National Rail archive only adds to its mildly creepy premise.

This short play is about a young man who visits a rather unusual rare wine shop and has some very specific requirements. What seems to be an ordinary transaction quickly becomes something different. The punchline is hilarious (although possibly offensive). To speak more about it would be to give too much away.

What holds it all together is two brilliant performances by Benjamin Dilloway as the customer (above left) and Jeff Rawle as the shopkeeper (above right). Apart from giving the production a bit of class, they play their roles in all seriousness and ignore the fact the other half of the room is full of the audience snickering...

An early evening or matinee treat for a fiver. See it this weekend before it finishes... Bemuse reactions with Adrian, who is from Melbourne and so not aware of the Leake Street phenomenon...

Vault Boo: excellent choice (mp3)

 

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