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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 ...
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Arguments: Britain is Indifferent to Beauty

Destined to be great fodder for the Sunday papers (and it was in both The Times and The Guardian today), I found myself at a debate on Thursday evening on the topic that Britain has become indifferent to beauty. It was a lively and entertaining debate with TV Historian pop star David Starkey and Roger Scruton arguing for the case, and Germaine Greer and Stephen Bayley against. Greer and Bayley won the debate, and not necessarily on the strengths of their arguments, but probably because Starkey and Scruton came across as fussy old men. A pity really as not only did Greer and Bayley contradict themselves, there was an emerging argument that our busy hectic lives has bumped the pursuit of beauty (in terms of the environment in which we live), down the order of priorities. Starkey and Scruton started to touch upon this, but they lost it amongst their stuffiness. Still it is delightful to hear them all speak, especially Greer. She takes a contrary view so easily that you wouldn't w...
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