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Showing posts with the label Pause 2020

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Life upon the wicked stage: Already Perfect at Kings Head Theatre

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Performing two shows a day on a Broadway run sounds exhausting enough. But when you’ve just had a not-so-great matinee and are having a crisis of confidence, I would assume the last thing you’d want is to confront your past. Yet that’s the situation in Already Perfect, writer-performer Levi Kreis’s slightly autobiographical journey of confronting the past and his younger self. With a series of toe-tapping and emotional songs in a sleek production, you’re invited to experience someone else’s therapy session. And with a show title called Already Perfect, you know what kind of session this is going to be. It makes for a show where nothing is left unsaid, even if it is unnecessary,  unbelievable or best left on a greeting card. It’s currently playing at the King’s Head Theatre .  The story begins in his dressing room after a matinee, with Kreis alone. The show didn’t go so well. Struggling after being dumped by a lover, pressure mounting on the evening show being filmed for poster...

Missing live theatre or The Death of England: Delroy

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Seeing the first instalment of Death of England at the National Theatre by Clint Dyer and Roy Williams seems like a lifetime ago. But it was only February. There in the smaller Dorfman Theatre 450 of use crammed into the intimate space to watch a piece about identity, race and class in Britain. Fast forward nine months of the pandemic, with lockdowns, excess deaths, Black Lives Matter, and "clapping for carers" we're back at the National. But this time around it's a black man who is talking about identity, race and class. And this time everyone is sitting apart wearing masks.  Even watching in the socially distanced space of the Olivier, it did not diminish the power of what the show has to say. The Olivier has been reconfigured to a theatre in the round seating up to 500. But with signs throughout the theatre reminding everyone to keep their “social-racial-distance”, you were never far away from being reminded that all is not well either in the state of the theatre ...

Hitting the pause button

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Life in London has taken a pause... As theatres have gone dark and we stay indoors, it makes you appreciate the open and vibrant cultural offer a place like London has. Always connected. Always something new. And going out to do something. But not for now. Now it is the time for going in...  Going out is a trip to the supermarket to buy food for the day. It isn’t so much as stockpiling groceries as the realisation that eating three meals a day at home means you need more food. Heading outside for exercise means a walk around the block or to the nearby park. And keeping two metres away from everyone... Especially the annoying jogger who is coughing incessantly. What lies ahead? We will find out soon.