Featured Post

A Man For All Seasons: Seagull True Story - Marylebone Theatre

Image
It's not often that you see a play that tells you not so much a story but gives you a sense of how it feels to be in a situation, how it feels to be silenced, how it feels to be marginalised, how the dead hand of consensus stifles your creativity. However, in Seagull True Story, created and directed by Alexander Molochnikov and based on his own experiences fleeing Russia and trying to establish himself in New York, we have a chance to look beyond the headlines and understand how the war in Ukraine impacted a a group of ordinary creatives in Russia. And how the gradual smothering of freedom and freedom of expression becomes impossible to resist, except for the brave or the suicidal. Against the backdrop of Chekhov's The Seagull, which explores love and other forms of disappointment, it presents a gripping and enthralling depiction of freedom of expression in the face of adversity. After playing earlier this year in New York, it plays a limited run at the Marylebone Theatre . Fro...

Theatre: A Moon For The Misbegotten

In keeping with an intensive week of theatre (since Si was in town), we caught a preview of Eugene O'Neill's A Moon For the Misbegotten at the Old Vic. It is the opening play for Kevin Spacey's 2006/07 season. Spacey has received a lot of flak in the press for his artistic direction over the last two years at the Old Vic, but this play is going to knock everyone's socks off. Everything about the production was fantastic.

Of course O'Neill has written a great story. You are drawn into their story around the relationship between the father and daughter still living on a run down farm, and their landlord and friend(?) who may sell the farm to them, or he may sell to a neighbour who is offering more… From there the story unfolds…

Eve Best in the central role gave an incredibly engaging performance. Spacey and Colm Meaney were also fabulous. The play was so full of life and the performances were so enjoyable that the audience members who hadn't passed out from the heat gave the cast a standing ovation at the end.  At this point I would advise to potential theatre-goers to the Old Vic to avoid alcohol until after a play as the theatre has no air conditioning and gets incredibly warm. In the circle where I sat, people were leaving (or rather staggering out) because of it.

Still they missed a great play. It is in previews until next week but I suspect it will become the must see play this autumn. Spacey was also in the news this week selling the most expensive tickets to the play in an auction for Bill Clinton's charity. At £130,000 for four tickets, that must set a new West End record…

After the play Si and I were both in agreement about it. I thought was probably a good antidote to Daddy Cool, the other show he saw that day. Daddy Cool is a musical set to the music of Bony M and if that isn't bad enough, features some dull star from Eastenders. The show also includes an enormous parrot which hangs in the dome of the theatre. Si didn't stick around for the second act so he couldn't tell me what it did, but in the first act it just was in the ceiling, and very visible to everyone. What a parrot is doing in a jukebox show set in multicultural London is anybody's guess I suppose. It opens on Thursday this week… Maybe the papers will explain it then…

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...