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Bear with me: Sun Bear @ParkTheatre

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If The Light House is an uplifting tale of survival, Sarah Richardson’s Sun Bear gives a contrasting take on this. Sarah plays Katy. We’re introduced to Katy as she runs through a list of pet office peeves with her endlessly perky coworkers, particularly about coworkers stealing her pens. It’s a hilarious opening monologue that would have you wishing you had her as a coworker to help relieve you from the boredom of petty office politics.  But something is not quite right in the perfect petty office, where people work together well. And that is her. And despite her protesting that she is fine, the pet peeves and the outbursts are becoming more frequent. As the piece progresses, maybe the problem lies in a past relationship, where Katy had to be home by a particular hour, not stay out late with office colleagues and not be drunk enough not to answer his calls. Perhaps the perky office colleagues are trying to help, and perhaps Katy is trying to reach out for help. It has simple staging

Music for desperate nights: Desperate Divas @St_JamesTheatre

Desperate Divas
It was only for one night, but hopefully it won’t be too long before we see the Desperate Divas return (if they can find the time between their busy schedules).

Tiffany Graves and Anita Louise Combe presented their show last Sunday about love and the fruitless pursuit of it. It was inspired by their real-life adventures dating men (and sometimes the same men). Both are exceptional singers with long careers on the West End. Their voices and be powerful yet nuanced - and when singing together they produced some sublime harmonies in this show.


The premise was that they are two young ladies on the internet dating scene. The most memorable moments from the evening came from the lesser known songs. Combe’s performance of Where In The World is My Prince, from William Finn and James Lapine’s musical Little Miss Sunshine, was a delight. Graves was sweet singing about unrequited like in Scott Burkell and Paul Loesel’s song, Parsley. Combe also played up her Australian roots, with My Shattered Illusion (or pronounced in Australian, Moye Shaahturd Eelooshon).

They capitalised on what seems to be a regular occurrence at cabaret performances nowadays, people taking photos, to encourage everyone to take pictures and live tweet it. It has been a while since I live tweeted anything but this time at least it was something lovely (well the ladies are lovely, the quality of the photography is a bit suspect). Of course when your audience takes the pictures they may not show your best side...

Graves and Combe closed their show with music from Chicago. Both had appeared at various times in the Kander and Ebb musical. Their familiarity with with the material came through as they sung Class with a bitterness in the phrasing that made seem fresh and new.

As they explain in the show, it has taken them a while from coming up with the idea to do the show to actually putting it on as they are both getting ready to appear in new shows. Graves will be seen in the touring production of The Producers as "If you got it, flaunt it" Ulla. Combe will be the demure Tessie Tura in Gypsy. But hopefully it won’t be too long before we see them appear again in their cabaret show.

⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎

First impressions with @johnnyfoxlondon are as follows…

listen to ‘Desperadoboom: first impressions of Desperate Divas @cabaretdivas with @johnnyfoxlondon’ on audioBoom

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