Featured Post

The brown word: Death on the Throne @gatehouselondon

Image
We’re warned at the start of the show with an upbeat number that this is not the usual sort of musical. And it turns out to be just that. But with boundless enthusiasm and energy from its two leads, who deploy a range of voices and breathtaking energy to create a series of voices for puppet characters, a bedtime story becomes a silly oddball tale about four souls stuck in purgatory. With puppets. And various toilet humour references. It’s currently playing at Upstairs At The Gatehouse . The piece starts as a bedtime story. Daddy (Mark Underwood) is about to read a bedtime story for Louise (Sarah Louise Hughes). But her stomach felt funny, and soon, she went to the bathroom. Then, for reasons that seem to only make sense in the confines of the show, they start telling the story of four people who died in unfortunate circumstances in the bathroom. Depicted as puppets, they’re stuck in purgatory as St Peter doesn’t have enough space for each of them in the afterlife. And so begins a puppe...
Please Hello...
After being in London for less than a month, one of the striking things is how uncultured the mass of the city is. Starbucks is on every corner serving bland coffee and styrofoam food. Deep pan pizza buffets are on every other corner serving stuff that wouldn't rate at a Sizzler restaurant back home. Fosters is a popular drink here and they have a special tap to generate an "artificial head" on the beer so it lasts while you finish it off. Ben Elton has a hit show with his stringing together of Queen songs into what is purported to be a musical, and he is about to do the same to Rod Stewart songs with the show Tonight's the night. Fortunately amongst all the trash in London, there are quite a few bright spots. One being the Donmar Warehouse.

On Friday I saw their latest production, Pacific Overtures (a co-production with the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre) and it was a knockout. A small all-male cast, a theatre in the round, and Sondheim was all that was needed for a spectacular and entertaining evening. As a show I was totally unfamiliar with, I was expecting that Sondheims treatment of the factual account of US warships arriving at Japan in the 1850s demanding that they have a "friendly relationships" and trade to be quite hard going. It fuses kabuki and noh theatre styles with western musical influences. It was a flop when it first premiered in 1976. But all that was put at ease after the first few minutes. The soaring melodies and scathing commentary on Western approach to diplomacy and influence seemed more relevant today than ever. The basic argument of the show (and the book it was based on) is that the Western approach to diplomacy in the 1850s planted the seeds for the Japanese expansion in the 1940s. The final number (updated to the present) suggests that American (and the rest of the Western societies) understanding of different cultures hasn't improved that much. Hmm it probably isn't too hard to guess why American audiences hated it.

It was a night of very civilised entertainment. It was nice to see it as I knew too that such an intelligent and entertaining show would never make it to Australia either (at least staged professionally). It isn't Ben Elton... That's what the mass of punters prefer nowadays.

Get outta town
Saturday I decided to take a day trip to Oxford. It was great to get out of the city and as the start of the academic year was about to happen it was a happening place as well with lots of people moving in.

Getting off the bus after a 90 min ride from London, I decided to buy a tourist map and see the sights. Not being a very good tourist I decided to sit down and have a coffee and cheese and ham toastie and plot my route. I liked the idea of eating the toastie not only because it was delicious and the cheese here is nothing like the crap that our dairy industry in Queensland tries to pass off as cheese, but because they actually called it a toastie and I just love it as a word. Anyway I digress. Over coffee and a toastie I mapped out a route and then walked it. It included a few stops in book stores and the usual Oxford landmarks. I spent the last few hours in Oxford reading The Times by the banks of one of their canals. Very sensible and civilised I thought!

Today...
After I finish blogging I will go and move my things to North East London. My first place by myself. Woo-hoo!

Popular posts from this blog

Opera and full frontal nudity: Rigoletto

Image
David McVicar's oddly modern production of Rigoletto is back at the Royal Opera House . This modern and minimalist dark production has evolved over the years. It is better lit now but there is still an orgy and full frontal nudity within the first thirty minutes. This enables anyone not in the stalls an excellent view of a flaccid penis and a nicely shaved bush. But as time goes it seems more and more superfluous to the main focus of this tragedy of a court jester who seeks revenge. Here is hoping that the production continues to evolve... Conductor John Eliot Gardiner keeps the music well paced. Dimitri Platanias in the title role sounded great and received a rapturous applause for his interpretation of the role. You get a sense more of the doting father rather than the court jester or cursed man here. Vittorio Grigolo plays the Duke and sounds too lovely to be the cad the role calls for, but it is hard not to like when he is on stage anyway. And it is easier to understan...
Read more...

Fantasies: Afterglow @Swkplay

Image
Nowadays no self-respecting gay play can be staged without full frontal nudity of some kind. It feels like the default response for the modern gay play now that gay rights are no longer an issue .   Afterglow, currently playing at Southwark Playhouse , serves it up in spades. From the beginning, three men are in a bed, naked. There’s what appears to be a very brief exhalation of ecstasy, before the obligatory rush to the shower. But the gratuitous nudity and excellent performances can’t conceal this is a pretty conventional and predictable story about a fantasy couple.  The three men in the simultaneous orgasm at the start of the piece are Josh, Alex and Darius. Josh and Alex seem to live in a New York world where they can afford a rooftop apartment in Manhattan while holding jobs as a theatre director and a grad student in chemistry. As writer S. Asher Gelman based it on his own experiences, perhaps gay plays with full frontal nudity are the way to achieve financial ...
Read more...

Play ball: Damn Yankees @LandorTheatre

Image
Damn Yankees at the Landor Theatre is one hell of a fun, sexy show. A great cast of dancers and singers give this show about a man who sells his soul to get on his beloved baseball team (and give them a chance of winning) new legs and balls. It also helps to up the ante with the sexiness with some healthy doses of cleavage and legs (and that's just the men). The musical is a retelling of the Faust story set in the 1950s when the New York Yankees dominated the game.
Read more...