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Showing posts with the label David Yelland

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Somewhere that's green: Potty the Plant at Wiltons Music Hall

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"I'm Potty the Plant," sings a potted plant in this odd little fringe concept of a show. It's hard not to get the tune out of your head, even if the show is brief. It's an earworm for a show that features a worm-like plant as a puppet. And given the show's brevity, running at only an hour, it's hard to get too annoyed by a lack of a coherent story, even if it still seems like the show could use a bit more development (which is underway). It has made its London debut at Wilton's Music Hall. The premise is that Potty, the plant, lives in the hospital office of Dr Acula (geddit?) and dreams of a life with the cleaning lady Miss Lacey (Lucy Appleton). But Dr Acula might be responsible for why all these children are disappearing while trying to romance Miss Lacey for her family's money that she doesn't have. Three nurses are on the case, trying to solve the mystery.  If the show settled on a convincing plot, location and set of characters, it could ...

German rivalry: Farm Hall @JSTheatre

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What is it about German scientists that fascinate us? Whether it be Dr Strangelove or The Right Stuff, the German scientist from the time of war features as an omnipresent genius. But in Farm Hall, the debut play from Katherine Moar, it's the reflective scientist, not the mad crazy one, that is the focus. And in its brisk 90 minutes, you feel it captures the world's time and place. There was madness everywhere but not at Farm Hall. It's currently playing at Jermyn Street Theatre .  Farm Hall is based on the detainment by allied forces of several German physicists towards the end of the Second World War. Victory in Europe was complete, but the war in the Pacific continued. The capture aimed to learn how developed the German nuclear programme was through eavesdropping on their conversations. These men were the senior players in the German nuclear programme. Removed from the day-to-day world and confined to a decaying mansion, they play chess and card games and repair an old p...