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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...

Theatre: Blink Again Turn on the lights!

It took me a while to work out why a man in a Spiderman suit kept appearing on stage for a show about songs from flop shows. I was somewhat distracted by the low turnout on Thursday evening to see Blink Again at Above The Stag to think too much further.

Maybe it was the weather or maybe it just wasn't gay enough show for the venue. But the cast were energetic and the irony of the lack of a big audience didn't seem lost on them. The show was a compilation of some great (and some not so great) songs from shows that perhaps did not put them in their best light. This includes songs such as "A Boy from Nowhere" from Matador and China Doll from Marguerite.

In the second half things liven up even more with a spirited re-enactment of scenes from the Umbrellas of Cherbourg. There is also a number from Tarzan where the actor stripped down to a rather skimpy loincloth and sang a rather vulnerable song...

The show runs until 3 July and notwithstanding the occasional underlit scene, a dud song or a persistent cough that seemed to come from where the music director was sitting, it was all good fun and worth catching... It runs through to 3 July. The views from the boo (including @Johnnyfox) are below...

Half way through Blink Again at Above The Stag (mp3)

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