[title of show] takes you back to a time before the fast paced social media where word of mouth for a positive show came from chat boards, video diaries or (god forbid) blogs. A simple staging makes it an ideal (and economical piece to stage), but it’s sweet and earnest take on just putting on a show, and putting it out there and taking a chance gives this show its heart. With a strong and energetic cast and endless musical theatre references, it’s hard to resist and it’s currently playing at the Southwark Playhouse . It opens with Hunter (Jacob Fowler) and Jeff (Thomas Oxley) as struggling young writers in New York City. An upcoming New York Musical Theatre festival, inspires them to write an original musical within three weeks to make the deadline. As they discuss ideas, writers block, distractions and endless other good and bad musicals, an idea for a show emerges. Which is about writing a show for a musical theatre festival. Their friends Heidi (Abbie Budden) and Susan (Mary Moor
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Theatre: The Fanta sticks
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The Fantasticks (which I mis-pronounced Fanta sticks thinking it was some sort of ice lolly) is now playing in the West End. It's a fifty-year old musical with whimsical songs and and tells an allegorical story that forces actors to run about and inflict injury on themselves for laughs. It played for forty years in New York and again has been revived again there recently, so there has to be something going for it. None of our party that included Johnnyfox and the West End Whingers had seen it before and the so it was as good an excuse as any for catching the second preview of this London revival...
It is great they are offering stage seats for the show. Not only are they cheaper tickets, it is more fun watching it sitting on stage, assuming you can stay awake for the full two hours (not everyone in our party could do this)... Plus you get a special little tour backstage to get to your seats (well not so much a tour but just a walk down some narrow stairs and past the props). Of course sitting on stage you don't get to see the actors faces much, but you get their sweat and some nice rear views and side profiles (if you like that sort of thing)... And you can watch people in the audience holding hands, fidgeting, looking bored and not returning after interval...
Of course sitting on stage has its problems when you have someone like Johnnyfox next to you... After pointing out to him you've spotted West End Whinger Andrew sitting on stage opposite with his shoes off as if he is channeling Bea Arthur, several minutes of trying to hold back laughter ensues. This turns to unrestrained laughter when a line about how a man knows how to use a carrot is uttered... I'm not sure if the book is meant to have all this innuendo in it, but we sure took it that way... And finally as the stage seats are vinyl, the slightest move to adjust ones buttocks sounds a bit like farting. None of this helps looking sensible, attentive and composed as an onstage audience member...
As for the rest of the show... Well, it's nice. There was a general consensus that the show must have been more fun in the 1960s when acid was plentiful and nobody cared about the book and the music. Going as a group added to the atmosphere and the fun (fart jokes aside)... And the actors including Edward Petherbridge are full of energy and enthusiasm that this makes up for the shortcomings of the material. While the show will no doubt get better as the run continues, there was the feeling this was a ninety minute show dragged out to two hours...
Probably its biggest problem is that it needs a smaller venue. Even with on stage seating and in the Duchess Theatre (one of the smaller West End theatres) it still feels like it is a small show in a big space. So you get a hybrid: a Fringe show on the West End... The Fringe elements extend to the costumes that made the young cast look like they were homeless people who walked in off the street. The males also could do with a shave and a haircut (or at least some manscaping to match their publicity shots). The West End elements extend to the some parts of the stage design and the price of the ticket... My advice would be to go with a group, get the discount seats on stage and make your own West End debut... Just mind those vinyl seats... It opens June 9...
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
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 security
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.
