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Showing posts with the label Michael Brandon

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Bit parts: Garry Starr Performs Everything @swkplay

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Garry Starr Performs Everything is a bare-bones (and bare buttocks) tribute to the theatre. Theatre may be in trouble, and audiences are down, but Garry Starr aims to save the theatre and bring back to the masses every style of theatre possible. As long as each style involves wearing a transparent white leotard or a skimpy thong. And tassels. It's part comedy, part physical comedy and part perv at Gary's physical prowess. The sentiment "if you've got it, flaunt it" applies here. So here we are with a show that has been around for some years and is having its first proper London run at the Southwark Playhouse (Borough) through Christmas. The premise is that Garry Starr (played by Damien Warren-Smith) has left the Royal Shakespeare Company over artistic differences. He is now on a mission to save the theatre from misrepresentation and worthy interpretations by doing things such as a two-minute Hamlet, recreating scenes from a Pinter play using unsuspecting audience
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Passing strangers: Off The Kings Road @JSTheatre

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Off The Kings Road. People come, people go. Nothing happens. Or perhaps not much happens. This isn't Grand Hotel in terms of melodrama or scale. Instead, there are two people in their autumn years trying to get over the past and move on. Oh and there is a hooker, a camp hotel clerk and a dodgy psychiatrist to Skype with. It is an interesting concept. But you get the feeling this small-scale production feels a bit crowded with all these characters. Perhaps played as a two-hander it might have given us the chance to get to know the two main characters more. Michael Brandon plays Matt. He has come to London from California for a holiday after the death of his wife. He has brought his Valium, mouthwash and a sex doll. He is a man trying to get over her passing. He has plans to do all the things they would have wanted to do. Go to the park, go to a gallery. Live life.
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The finer things in life: The Long Road South @KingsHeadThtr

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The Long Road South at the Kings Head Theatre takes the period of the 1965 civil rights marches and distills it into a small character study. But the pleasure from this piece is in its humour and strong performances. Not much is happening in the summer of 1965 in Indiana. It is hot and the house of the Price family needs looking after. And over the course of the next ninety minutes, it becomes clear that it is not just the hedges and the grass that need trimming.
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