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Somewhere that's green: Potty the Plant at Wiltons Music Hall

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"I'm Potty the Plant," sings a potted plant in this odd little fringe concept of a show. It's hard not to get the tune out of your head, even if the show is brief. It's an earworm for a show that features a worm-like plant as a puppet. And given the show's brevity, running at only an hour, it's hard to get too annoyed by a lack of a coherent story, even if it still seems like the show could use a bit more development (which is underway). It has made its London debut at Wilton's Music Hall. The premise is that Potty, the plant, lives in the hospital office of Dr Acula (geddit?) and dreams of a life with the cleaning lady Miss Lacey (Lucy Appleton). But Dr Acula might be responsible for why all these children are disappearing while trying to romance Miss Lacey for her family's money that she doesn't have. Three nurses are on the case, trying to solve the mystery.  If the show settled on a convincing plot, location and set of characters, it could ...

Theatre: Christmas in New York

Sunday night I caught a concert showcasing new music from composers in New York and London called Christmas in New York.

It's great to see new music in the West End since most shows nowadays are juke box collections of classic hits or revivals. The only trouble is that new music doesn't always mean that it is great music. Even though it wasn't necessarily the case, by interval it felt like every song seemed either dour or trite or a bit of both. It would have been fine in an elevator but in a large theatre that was a bit of a problem. And surely only composer Frank Wildhorn could use a lyric call St Paul's Cathedral "ancient"? The British composers who had their new songs showcased tonight were good, but I still couldn't get over the rest. If it wasn't earnest, it was a song that would be good to slash up by.

I guess music theatre was once at the cutting edge, but I wasn't thinking along these lines. I guess nowadays if you want cutting edge you don't go to the theatre. And if Christmas is supposed to be a time of celebration, why so many glum songs? Maybe there are not as many fun new Christmas songs nowadays... Pity... Not all of the songs were new music and a few oldies and Christmas classics helped put some needed balance into the evening.

Anyway the music aside, the performances were great and included a number of current West End stars on their night off. Every time Julie Atherton was on stage it was a treat. The same could be said for Daddy Cool star Melanie La Barrie. For the men it was great to see Wicked star James Gillan perform as well.

Here's hoping there continue to be more of these concerts, but lets hope there are more new songs out there that are genuinely funny and not either moaning about divorce or being alone or just general bloody misery... Lighten up everybody!

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