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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 ...

Sex, Drugs and Downton: Guilt and Shame Addicted to Everything @sohotheatre

For a brief moment last week, Guilt and Shame took over the upstairs space at the Soho Theatre for some random therapy on addiction, drugs and masturbating penises through glory holes.  Alternating between the bizarre and the offensive, it made for a great night of comedy.

Arriving at the theatre everyone is instructed by Gabe to put on a name tag as everyone is about to take part (unwittingly or not) in an addicts anonymous group.

Then his best friend and eternal gay virgin Rob arrives dragging both themselves and the audience on filthy journey literally to hell and back. The journey includes acting out sex with a swan (pictured above), getting a member of the audience to confront his fear of penises in men's toilets and observations about gay men who have an unhealthy liking for Downton Abbey...


Guilt and Shame have been gathering a following after various shows, including a sell-out run in Edinburgh Fringe last year. It was clear on Friday night they had quite a following already with the audience anticipating their routine and writing on their name tags "sex addict" or "cum whore".

As G&S virgins, all I could do was just hold on for the ride and hope for the best...

The energy levels and the camaraderie between Gabriel Bisset-Smith and Robert Cawsey made the show something more than just a series of sketches and distinctive and funny enough to be a duo to keep an eye out for. And you probably will leave their show humming Scatman...

The run has finished for now but check their website for future dates... Or look up their work on Youtube...

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