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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...
Music: What I'm Listening to - Kristen Chenoweth

Downloaded a Kristen Chenoweth album off iTunes last night. She's showy and she's brassy and she's loud... But her album had many songs I weren't familiar with so it was aIt has this wonderful little ditty written by Comden & Green called "If" with lyrics that include:


IF: you had been on the square, and had treated me fair, and we'd not had a tiff…
IF: you had not said I should go and jump right off the nearest cliff!
IF: You had stayed off the make, and you never had taken to coming home stiff.
IF: I hand not smelled perfume with a nasty unfamiliar whiff!
I'm gonna miss you baby
Things could've been teriff!
Ah, what's the diff…


...Amen to that honey!

Actually while we are on the subject of music that I listen to, a colleague at work saw me on the tube a few weeks back in my own little iPOD world. He had his own music so I didn't interrupt. We don't work together so that was fine. Time passes and then just this week he came into the office and asked what I was listening to that day he saw me on the tube. I had no idea what I was listening to. When you have an iPOD it makes you very odd in that you shuffle tracks from Brahms to Britney. Of course in reality I am sure what I was listening to was A New Brain - which is a musical about a NY gay Jewish man who gets a brain tumor - so to sound more mainstream I said I was listening to Rufus Wainwright. This led to a whole discussion on Vic Chesnutt, Tom Waits and various other artists he likes and I am quite partial to as well. The conversation ended with a promise of a "mix tape" or CD of some his vast record collection...

Being a suspicious person living and working in very suspicious times I made some discreet enquiries into the motivation here. Haven't come up with anything yet, so will have to wait and see whether I get a CD I suppose...

Sunday working hard

Today I Finally joined a gym. It took a while to get it all together, but now will have to make it a regular activity. I will also try and find a place to live that works in well with the trip home...

After 25 minutes cardio I have realised that a year and a half of non-gym activity has taken its toll. I am not very fit. Fortunately I was not alone in that department so I wasn't exercising in shame...

It is a fantastic gym as well full of great equipment and the rest so that is enough to spur on the motivation I think...

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