Posts

Featured Post

Wine time: The Frogs - Southwark Playhouse

Image
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...

Overheard in SW9 on the weekend...

Woman on phone (with handsfree): Wellaaavebincallinyou... Wellaahdon'givafuck...

Scenes from Hyde Park Saturday afternoon

Image
Picture 364 , originally uploaded by Paul-in-London . Well, people should try something new on sunny days...

Scenes from rehearsal

Image
Crap flower arrangement 101 was beforehand... Posted via email from paulinlondon's posterous

Hot news this week in London...

Image
Boy Of 13 Becomes a Dad , originally uploaded by LinkMachineGo . East Sussex is pretty grim , But it may not be so grim after all... The boy may not be the father as the girl may have been the town bike ...

Theatre: On The Waterfront

Image
If there was too much sex on stage at the opera on Tuesday, there didn't seem enough of it on Wednesday in this engaging stage adaptation of On The Waterfront at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. There is a lot of excitement and dramatic tension in this tight production directed by Steven Berkoff ... Assuming you overlook some unintentionally hilarious moments such as when the actors play pigeons (the effect is funnier than the scenes of singing birds in The Producers ). But with all that tension and bitterness, I thought perhaps a bit of roughing up of the actors could have helped. Well at least in the climatic fight scene, it would have been nice to see Simon Merells (who plays the Brando character), have some of his clothes ripped off... Alas it wasn't meant to be. Still there is enough violence implied in this shadowy story of corruption and mob violence on the New Jersey docks in the 1950s. Berkhoff sees the story as relevant for any age. Whatever the case is, it is a great...

Opera: Rigoletto

Tuesday night I found myself watching full frontal nudity and simulated sex at the Royal Opera House during the opening few minutes of Rigoletto . Now normally I would not have such a problem with seeing this, but I found myself preoccupied trying to work out if the actress having sex with a reasonably endowed actor had a Brazilian or a French. After much checking... It was definitely French. By the time the first act closed, I was distracted so much that I had to read the synopsis to work out what happened. It is a pity that this production (which has only been around since 2001) seems now to be full of distractions, but the performances made up for it. The last few operas I had caught had singers that were at times a bit suspect - both vocally and in the acting department - but this was not the case on Tuesday night. The audience reserved its most cheers for Leo Nucci in the title role. Rigoletto is a great story as well so there is so much going for this production... Even if on Tu...

scenes from around haymarket Wednesday evening

Image
...or maybe not... Posted via email from paulinlondon's posterous

scenes from a rehearsal

Image
A random helium balloon... Posted via email from paulinlondon's posterous