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A night at the opera: That Bastard Puccini! (Park Theatre)

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It’s hard to imagine that it’s only been 130 years since Puccini first premiered La Boheme. Nowadays, it’s a revered classic, and guaranteed to be on any opera company's annual programme if it needs to stay afloat. It’s a crowd pleaser with its melodrama of poor, impoverished artists loving, starving and dying in Paris. But Puccini’s La Boheme had a less auspicious beginning, with one of his contemporaries accusing him of stealing his idea and being poorly received on its first outing. And that’s at the heart of That Bastard Puccini! Currently playing at Park Theatre , writer James Inverne uses the friendship and rivalry between the two composers, Puccini and Ruggero Leoncavallo, to weave a comic tale of creative frustration with an awful lot of facts and tidbits about the opera scene at the time. It’s part comedy, part music appreciation.  It opens with Leoncavallo (Alasdair Buchan) at home with his wife Berthe (Lisa-Anne Wood), cursing about Puccini’s latest work, which is drawn ...

The sex is in the beat: Kinky boots @kinkybootsuk

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I finally caught up with Kinky Boots , which is currently playing at the Adelphi theatre in London. The show is the Full Monty meets Priscilla Queen of the Desert. It's a show with terrific songs, great cast and fabulous outfits. However the story is a bit predicable. It derives its formula plot from the film of the same name. But thankfully as an added addition are a collection of songs written by Cindy Lauper that range from folk, pop and disco. On top of this are some very impressive (albeit kinky) boots.