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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...

Movies: Only Connect / Bermondsey


How many cheap jumpers can one take in an evening? Well I guess it was the 1970s... And it was Bermondsey...

Wednesday evening I caught a double bill of 1970s television movies at the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. I was dreading the experience thinking that it would feature a lot of cheap woolen knits and moaning about socialism. It did of course, but the treat of the evening was catching the 30 minute play Bermondsey which was described in the programme as Brokeback Mountain in a south east London Pub.

It was a bit more sophisticated than that, and told the story about a love triangle and how the wife and gay lover conspire to keep a man from running off with his mistress. Written by Sir John Mortimer and filmed in 1972 it was definitely a cut above the usual fare that is served up at these festivals. There was plenty to talk about over post cinema drinks at the smart new bar at the BFI Southbank (not that an excuse was really needed for that anyway)...

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