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Wine time: The Frogs - Southwark Playhouse

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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...

Another take: This Comedian @EmbassyTea


Idil Sukan’s debut exhibition, This Comedian, is now at the Embassy Tea Gallery through to 8 March.

It is a retrospective of her creative work in production, design and photography in the comedy industry. The varied collection from the last decade includes 200 of Idil's portraits and photographs of live performance.


It includes comedians Eddie Izzard, Clive Anderson and Paul Merton (whose newly-released autobiography Only When I Laugh has as its front cover Idil’s most recent portrait of him); as well as performers who appear in comedy sitcoms and films, such as Patrick Stewart and Michael Gambon; and recent breakthrough artists such as Bridget Christie, Daniel Rigby, Sara Pascoe and James Acaster.

Honing her skills at the Edinburgh Festival, Sukan has been one of the most successful and prolific photographers and designers at the Festival in the last ten years. Traditional curatorial displays and marketing devices such as wall-to-wall poster coverage are recreated here. It is impressive and varied collection of visual marketing and documented portraiture. Worth a look and admission is free.

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