Paul in London

The View from The Shard opens on Friday and having caught a preview of it earlier in the month, it is worth a look... Even if it is a snowy day... And visibility is poor... There is still a gee whiz excitement about looking down from the London landmark. There is something light and delicate about The Shard that makes it intriguing and not just another tall building. The journey starts with a slightly eccentric tour of London and its people before you are shuffled into one of two lifts to take you to the thirty-third floor. You are told that it will take you at speeds of six metres a second but unlike other tall buildings in London , it is not a glass lift so there is no horror or nausea from shooting up. Perhaps it is the low lighting and video screens of soothing autumnal leaves and snow that does it, but you do not feel a thing. You then have to take another lift to the top which again has soothing music and video screens which takes you to the top. There are a few more stair

New Wimbledon Theatre still offers one of the best pantomime productions with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, with Priscilla Presley as the wicked queen, and a star turn by Jarred Christmas as her henchman. There is no pantomime dame in this show, but there are seven dwarfs headed up by Warwick Davis. It is a good balance of cheap laughs, songs, elaborate costumes and camp dance routines. It is a shame that Priscilla has to wear horns throughout the show as they cover her face and don't make it easy for her too look evil... But then again the show is a sensible two hours and ten minutes so it is a bit hard to get too bothered by this sort of thing as things move along so briskly there is no time for even turning to the programme and getting out the crayons to do a spot of colouring in...  One Direction's "What Makes You Beautiful" continues to be a popular music selection choice in panto... Here's hoping next year's shows license a few more boy bands

Alan Bennett's play People is packing in audiences at the National Theatre . While enjoyable for the performances, design and occasional flash of bare buttocks and thigh, you may find yourself wondering what is the point of it. It isn't funny enough to be a comedy and not insightful enough to satire. But I'm hoping that it is just not a particularly good play rather than a desperate grab at elitism . As surely what National Theatre audiences don't want to do is to look down and feel smug about people that visit places of interest across the country? If anything it is a very mild satire about a run down house that the National Trust is hoping to acquire from aristocrat Dorothy Stacpoole, played by Frances de la Tour. Dorothy was a former fashion model but now is walking around in a moth eaten coat and gym shoes. She sleeps on the floor in front of an electric heater and apart from her companion Iris, does not see many people. Her younger sister who is a respectable

 The Wilmington Theatre Company's debut production of three short comic plays by George Bernard Shaw makes for a frightfully witty and enjoyable evening at the Old Red Lion Theatre . The acting and production values are quite high as infidelity, polygamy and morality are all explored. Often with hilarious results. In the first piece, How He Lied To Her Husband , a wife loses poems written for her by her young admirer. They fall into her husband's hands and his response is not quite what the wife or lover expect. It is a three hander that plays well in the confines of the theatre space and with a focussed cast everyone was hooked. Well almost everyone as there was a couple in one corner that may have got carried away with Shaw's attempts to hold a mirror up to nature and were passionately making out. The second piece, Overruled , covers two adulterous couples who are caught in the act on vacation. The source of the comedy here is the honesty of each of the couple'

Closing night of The Royal Opera's Robert le Diable was a drawn out affair. An opera that was described to me as Mildred Pierce meets The Omen , it could have been half its length if all the repeated phrases were cut. I don't recall ever seeing an audience so restless either who were mostly squirming or fidgeting throughout the four and a half hours of the performance. Meyerbeer's grand opera was an instant sensation when it first premiered 1831. Full of stuff that packed in the punters - drama, the occult, difficult music - over time it has not aged well. The story is inspired by a medieval legend of the devil's son. Robert, Duke of Normandy, has travelled to Sicily with the hope of marrying Princess Isabelle. But his companion, Bertram (who turns out to be more than just a friend) leads him astray. Cue chivalry, the occult and some incredibly outrageous French knight costumes that could have come direct from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Closing night seeme

Salad Days is back at the Riverside Studios and is a delightful antidote to cold wet days in London. The story of a young couple who just recently graduated and find themselves entertaining London with a piano is a bit like the Fantasticks with its ever-so-silly plot, but the performances, inspired production and upbeat nature of the show make for an enjoyable, if slightly overlong show. It is 1954 and Timothy and Jane (played by the wonderful Leo Miles and Katie Moore ) leave university to make their own ways in the world. A chance meeting with a tramp brings the couple together as his street piano gives everyone around them an irresistible and unstoppable urge to dance. Meanwhile the police and the establishment want to put a stop to all this fun. Cue singing and dancing and general silliness. The production is from opera company Tête à Tête , and so the singing and musicianship is very good. But the ensemble also show a great sense of comic timing and fun in the proceedi

Merrily We Roll Along , currently playing at the Menier Chocolate Factory near London Bridge is like a bitchier, nastier version of his show Company where Bobby is Frank and a total bastard. It has received great reviews , has a wonderful cast, looks good (well as good as aluminium windows on stage can be when they design feature - but the period is the sixties and seventies so it is appropriate) and sounds great. But for a show that tells the tale in reverse about how a man becomes wildly successful and loses his friends on the way, it is still a tough, bitter sell. The characters are two-dimensional and shout at each other and even as they move from jaded to optimistic, it still feels unrelenting and repetitive. By the time the upbeat finale comes about (close to the third hour) you may find yourself close to exhaustion (or sleep) to care about it much. At intermission one Sondheimista fan said to me, "but all those lost opportunities and wrong turns... That's life!&quo

Theatre in London is pretty good value for money, particularly if you don't mind trying your luck at the half price ticket booth, trying to get to the theatre by 10am for the few day seats on sale. Many of London's ageing theatres have great seats at a good price if you don't mind a partially restricted view or a bench seat. But it can be a false economy if you find yourself sitting in the theatre with your knees up to your ears because the row in front of you is so close. Or if you are so high and far away from the stage you can't see anything other than a small fuzzy dots which might be either actors or the onset of vertigo. While there are a few sites out there that review theatres, the information tends to go out of date as theatres are upgraded, so a new website Seat Plan aims to address that. It's launching in the new year and for every review posted by the end of this week, it is offering the chance to win £100 worth of theatre vouchers. 49,000 seats are r

Some fun costumes, and a great performance by Tim Vine (pictured far left) as Wishy Washy keep Aladdin at the Richmond Theatre as a sensible evening out for families (or very big kids) who don't mind a mild case of panto over Christmas. This version of the Aladdin follows a fairly traditional storyline. Aladdin works in his mothers laundry, meets a princess and after stumbling across the lamp with a genie, is granted riches that allows him to marry her. Well he would have married her if that evil Abanazar didn't get in the way. The loose plot is an opportunity to show off some great costumes, sing a few songs and tell a few gags. A few more filthier jokes for older members of the audience (timed to sail over the heads of the younger ones), and a few more modern tunes would have made the show better. Of course for the younger members of the audience, who were likely to be experiencing their first time at the theatre this did not matter so much. They were hooked on the drama an

A day in the life of a married couple, as set in a bathroom is the premise of Jack Thorne's sharp and funny play,  Mydidae , currently playing at the Soho Theatre. This classy little play on the top floor of the Soho Theatre features a fully plumbed bathroom, that  provides the backdrop for a full and frank exploration of a couple and their secrets. Actors Pheobe Waller-Bridge and Keir Charles undress, shave, lust after each other, wash and urinate in front of the audience. Strangely enough they don't fart in front of each other which was possibly a missed opportunity as there never seems to be a better place to do that than in a bathroom... Particularly if your partner is in it...  Of course once you get past the novelty of the full frontal nudity; the tweaking of the penis, the perky tits and vagina at eye level, it is amazing how it is the intensity of the performances and the intriguing story that holds your attention. The piece seems an innocent enough premise at