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The greatest show and other bromances: Adam Riches and John Kearns ARE Ball and Boe @sohotheatre

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Alfie Boe and Michael Ball seem to be a bit of a joke act anyway. Their endless interpretations of popular songs (also known as covers) and their double-act bromance make them quintessential crossover artists where popular music meets opera and Broadway. And a perilous choice for the discerning listener. It’s not that they aren’t talented musicians and performers in their own right. Still, their musical choices are always safe, predictable and less than their potential. But every country deserves to have a pair of self-described national treasures that can tour the local arenas and give people a good time for the bargain price of £175 a seat.  And so the concept of Adam Riches and John Kearns - two world-famous from the Edinburgh Fringe comedians taking on this bromance seems like a curious choice for a Christmas musical fare. One can only hope that over the fourteen nights, it is playing at the Soho Theatre that the show evolves into something more substantial than a series of po...

Film: Brokeback Mountain

I caught Brokeback Mountain this evening. Like so many others I had been referring to the film as Bareback Mountain and I was quite surprised that within the first hour of the film it lived up to its name…

By this point the film seemed to be more about that category of men that exists who identify as straight but just have sex with men – MSNs on the Wyoming mountains is probably not the best place to have safe sex outreach workers – particularly given all the bears that exist there. Anyway over the next two hours the story does get a little more involved, but it is more about what is not spoken that really starts making you wonder about the characters…

The film has been doing well here in London, and it is probably more to do more with how well the story is told rather than its subject matter. But surely it should also serve as a cautionary tale to wives who let their husbands go to Wyoming to fish on long weekends?

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