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Showing posts with the label Jenny Eastop

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Heavy meta: Why am I So Single? @sosinglemusical

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Being young and single never seemed so fun, full of energy, yet full of contradictions in this high-concept meta-musical, Why Am I So Single? The fourth wall is not so much broken as endlessly pummelled as the cast talks directly to the audience. Frequently. But essentially, it’s about young people with neuroses and smartphone addiction exploring why they can’t find love in present-day London. Told with a series of spectacular songs and dance scenes in this new musical from the creators of Six, Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss. But while we don’t necessarily get an answer that rings true to the question posed by this show, you are likely to be distracted mainly by the energy and the songs. It’s currently playing at the Garrick Theatre.  A new musical based on an original idea, the premise is that Oliver (Jo Foster) and Nancy (Leesa Tulley) - which are not their real names but names taken from their favourite musical, Oliver - have to write a new musical but are stuck for an idea. So, after e
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Oughta be in pictures: The Biograph Girl @Finborough

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Musicals are usually about a love story. In The Biograph Girl, the love story is about the love of going to the flickers and the people who made them. The flickers were what people called the short silent movies. Before they started treating the medium as a form of art. And a source of serious money making. The show is having its first professional production in nearly forty years at the Finborough Theatre . While there’s much love for the subject, a musical covering the early years of film is a tad ambitious. Covering the stories of Lilian Gish, Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith doesn’t allow much time to explore them in any detail. Or any of the peripheral characters that surround them. People come and go. Only by reading the programme notes do you get a sense of who they were. And while the musical numbers are fun, they also tend to slow down rather than advance their stories.  It’s a minimalist production too with its plain white walls, a few chairs and an electric piano. It’s a pity
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Carpe diem: Mr Gillie @Finborough

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Poor Mr Gillie. A headmaster at a small village  school railing against the norms and expectations of the time. It's like a poor mans Dead Poets Society... Without the privileged young men, the cliches or the sentimentality. It's funny too which makes this piece enjoyable even if it is a little long. Here life is the pits, and Mr Gillie was the only hope for anyone who didn't care for that. It's playing at the Finborough Theatre and is the first London production in over 60 years of James Bridie's work. It opens with the a judge and barrister discussing the life of Mr Gillie. Mr Gillie and his wife had been evicted from their schoolmaster's house after the closing down of the school. The furniture van was coming to clear out his things but had run over and killed him. Now the  judge and barrister would have to decide whether his life had any point.
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