Featured Post

Wine time: The Frogs - Southwark Playhouse

Image
For a show called The Frogs, there isn’t much amphibian activity in the piece. But being a show with music by Stephen Sondheim, you could be mistaken for thinking it’s a critical theatrical piece. But like Sondheim’s final musical playing at the National Theatre, while it may not be a musical that fills you with provocative thoughts, it’s a fast-paced romp through hell and back to save the world for the sake of arts. With rousing choruses, thrilling choreography and plenty of cheap laughs, what more can you want from the theatre? It’s currently playing at the Southwark Playhouse (Borough) . There isn’t much to the plot, except that Dionysus (Dan Buckley), disillusioned by the state of a divided world, and his sidekick and slave, Xanthias (Kevin McHale), cross the river Styx to the underworld to find a great writer who they can return to the world to teach the world about life. He has his mind set on bringing back George Bernard Shaw until he hears the poetry of Shakespeare.  This v...

Changes: Drag King Richard III @RiversideLondon

Drag King Richard III, playing this week at Riverside Studios, tackles Shakespeare and transgender issues with mixed effects. But you can't fault the performances and the style of the piece.

There are some clever moments that use music and dance to bring out the issues of the story. Even more remarkable is that the two performers - Anne Zander and Bonnie Adair - had only a few days to work with the material following some last minute cast changes.

Pieces from Shakespeare's Richard III are woven into this exploration of transgender identity, giving new meaning to the text, but perhaps greater attention on characterisation and less on the Shakespeare text might have made for a more rewarding evening.
The story centres around Laurie. Born biologically female but feels all her life that she is living in the wrong body. This causes complications for school friend La Femme, a butch lesbian who enjoys dressing in femme drag.

It really helps to brush up on your lesbian terminology if you are not familiar with it. Laurie is stone (butch). I only knew what that meant after a gang of lesbian bikers I sat next to at a Pride festival many years ago decided to enlighten me and my delicate friends about their subculture many years ago. I found my mind wandering about the gory details they divulged on that day until a piece in your face choreography snapped my mind back to attention.

But back to the piece, La Femme finds it difficult to accept that Laurie is becoming Laurence, and the challenges of making such a change are brought to the fore, drawing on their past shared history and the Shakespearean text.

In the programme notes the writer, Dr Terri Power, notes that the piece was a personal and political snapshot of what LGBTQ Americans felt at the time, where rights were not recognised. But in many ways the themes of loneliness and isolation are still relevant. And perhaps there aren't enough pieces that explore transgender themes.

The performance also includes a Q&A session with the creative team afterwards.  It concludes its brief run at The Riverside Studios on Sunday.

***



Photo credits: Jamie Scott-Smith


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...