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Showing posts with the label Charlotte Gooch

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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...

La vie en rose: Dirty Dancing @DDonstage

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Just like you can't keep Baby in the corner, you also can't let the West End live without the musical Dirty Dancing for long. Dirty Dancing - The Classic Story on Stage is back in the West End at the Dominion Theatre . I'm assuming the classic story has been added to the title since more time has elapsed since the film came out and today than when the film came out and the period where the action takes place.  Dirty Dancing has been a regular feature on the West End since it first premiered here in 2006. But in the space of the Dominion Theatre, everything about it enhanced and enlarged. The theatre is big. The volume is cranked up, so you feel the bass. The dancing is full of high kicks. The mousy role of Baby, here played by Kira Malou, seems even mousier. And Michael O'Reilly playing the Patrick Swayze role, is so big that when he appears in his underwear in one scene you wonder where the show is going. But don’t worry this is a family show. The only thing dirty in t...