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Showing posts with the label James Sheldon

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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...

Love and war: Creditors @JSTheatre

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Walking into Jermyn Street Theatre to see the new translation of Strindberg's Creditors feels like you're transported to a small seaside hotel in the late 1800s. The sounds, look and feel, takes you there on some unknown Nordic island where the action takes place. And it's gorgeousness lulls you into a false sense of security for the mind games that are about to take place over the next ninety minutes. It opens with Adolf (James Sheldon), talking desperately about the love for his new wife with a man he recently has befriended, Gustaf (David Sturzaker). She's just published a book about her idiotic husband from her first marriage and now gone away for a few days. And her absence is driving Adolf crazy. He's stopped painting and started working on a very sexually provocative sculpture. But his new friend is sowing the seeds of doubt about his wife. He saw her on the ferry chatting to some young men. And as Adolf becomes increasingly neurotic about his new...