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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...

Travel can be exhausting: Travels With My Aunt

Travels With My Aunt, a revival of Giles Havergal's adaptation of Graham Greene's novel, is currently playing at the Menier Chocolate Factory and it is an enjoyable evening and a great looking production... And the four middle aged men playing all the roles are pretty good too, although it does feel like you are watching a wonderful radio play at times...

The story is about a retired and somewhat boring bank manager named Henry Pulling. At his mother's funeral he meets up again with his Aunt Augusta and finds himself pulled into her unconventional and globetrotting life and her various male companions.

Directed by Christopher Luscombe, it is such a sophisticated production executed with great comic timing that you soon forget that all the roles are played by four actors and get swept up in the story. It is full of humorous touches that make the most of the globetrotting story. The stage is broken up into a waiting room, a train platform and a lost property office holding the various props needed for the piece. A rather unconventional departure board assists with keeping track of the location of the story.


If anything, the adaptation of the piece while being very economical with both story and roles and a great interpretation of the aunt by Jonathan Hyde, you may still wish for a fully-fledged production where the Aunt is played by a separate actress. There is the 1972 film where Maggie Smith plays the aunt, although notwithstanding that Smith has always looked old, she seems a bit too young to be playing this role...



Travels With My Aunt plays at the Menier Chocolate Factory until 29 June and provides cheap laughs and wonderful travel paraphernalia. Just no aunt...

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