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Showing posts with the label Alex Gwyther

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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...

Boys town: Eyes Closed, Ears Covered @BunkerTheatreUK

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In the year since opening,  The Bunker  at Southwark has established itself for new and experimental pieces. Alex Gwyther’s Eyes Closed, Ears Covered is no exception. It’s a dark and confusing world where laughs and kicking about is a cover for something more sinister. It opens with an incident on the beach in Brighton in the late eighties. A boy’s been attacked and the police arrest two boys and question them about the events of the day. The two boys questioned, Seb and Aaron, had planned the day for weeks. They’ve planned and saved enough money and are going to bunk off school. But something has gone horribly wrong. There’s Aaron (Danny-Boy Hatchard), the cocky yet short-fused one. He’s got the plan to make it happen. And it was Seb’s (Joe Iris-Roberts) idea of the wide-eyed to visit his mum in Brighton. They seem like ten year olds as they bounce off each other and run about the stage recounting their mate ship. But as they tell their stories separately neither seem to pr...