Featured Post

Bit parts: Garry Starr Performs Everything @swkplay

Image
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

Hairography: Vanities: The Musical

 
The secret of lasting friendships is really about having the correct fitting wig. Well, I think that's what it is after catching Vanities: The Musical. It's a musical valentine to soap opera dramatics and retro hair styles currently playing at Trafalgar Studios.

The show is given a heavy injection of talent with the performances by its three leading ladies. While this makes it very watchable, you are left wishing there was just something more in the material.


 

Vanities: the Musical is adapted from the eighties play of the same name. It charts the vagaries of friendships and people drifting apart from their school days. Opening as the three friends, Joanne, Mary and Kathy are planning their big high schools cheerleading event. On the day President Kennedy gets shot. Each of them complete with fabulous sixties hairdos. It's a metaphor for how such promise turns bad. 

Fast forward to the last day of college they are planning to go their separate ways. Joanne is getting married, Mary is travelling the world and Kathy is going off to teach. 

But things aren't all that they seem. Catching up in the 1970s after being apart for a few years, the hairstyles are different and the friends are different. Joanne is conservative and cares less about her looks. Mary is a worldly bitch with an erotic art gallery and hair to match. Kathy is without a job but staying in a fabulous penthouse in New York with hair like Farrah Fawcett. The scene is set for a small bit of conflict which would see the friends only reunite when Mary's mother dies.

As a play it was a hit Off-Broadway. But as a musical the songs feel as if they only skim the surface of emotions. The piece also tends to musicalise the trivial and superfluous without being much fun. Perhaps also due to the small-scale nature of this production they songs don't always sound their best either. 

But the performances are great. All three are working their hardest to keep the show moving. Ashleigh Gray as the control-freak Kathy who has to deal with things beyond her control is sweet. Lizzy Connolly  plays Joanne for broad laughs and usually gets them. Lauren Samuels takes on pantomime villain-like qualities in the second half of the piece.

The resourceful (although perhaps slightly overly elaborate) set the ladies have to move about to morph moved from locker rooms and showers to dorm rooms to chic Manhattan apartment and funeral home was fun to watch too. 

Definitely a must for fans of these leading ladies. But for others you might wish for better material... 

Vanities the Musical runs downstairs at the Trafalgar Studios until 1 October.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Photo credit: Production photos by Pamela Raith

 

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 security
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...