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Showing posts with the label star turns

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The brown word: Death on the Throne @gatehouselondon

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We’re warned at the start of the show with an upbeat number that this is not the usual sort of musical. And it turns out to be just that. But with boundless enthusiasm and energy from its two leads, who deploy a range of voices and breathtaking energy to create a series of voices for puppet characters, a bedtime story becomes a silly oddball tale about four souls stuck in purgatory. With puppets. And various toilet humour references. It’s currently playing at Upstairs At The Gatehouse . The piece starts as a bedtime story. Daddy (Mark Underwood) is about to read a bedtime story for Louise (Sarah Louise Hughes). But her stomach felt funny, and soon, she went to the bathroom. Then, for reasons that seem to only make sense in the confines of the show, they start telling the story of four people who died in unfortunate circumstances in the bathroom. Depicted as puppets, they’re stuck in purgatory as St Peter doesn’t have enough space for each of them in the afterlife. And so begins a puppe...
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Lovely repeating spam: Spamalot

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The new, slightly sillier version of Spamalot which has come back to the West End turns out to be almost like an out of season panto. Given the large number of families who were there to enjoy it during half term, perhaps the show really an awfully appropriate and a surefire way for cheap laughs in the West End. In this revised production, a few scenes have been cut and songs trimmed and more topical references have been inserted into the lyrics. It now runs only two hours including the interval, and the end result is that it feels like a snappier and faster paced show. Even if the production values aren't as lavish, the naughty words are not as frequent, or the cast as large, I much preferred this version to its original West End run. The show is loosely based upon (or lovingly ripped off from as the show calls it) the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail , which lampoons King Arthur's quest to find the Holy Grail in the middle ages. But all you really need to know is tha...
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Phone book reading and star turns at the theatre: Big and Small

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There are people out there that would watch a talented actress read a phonebook. Gross Und Klein is a new translation of Botho Strauss's 1978 play at the Barbican comes close to this experience. Direct from Sydney Theatre Company and headlined by Cate Blanchett it is the unravelling of a woman's life after her husband leaves her. The play starts off well with Blanchett's character overhearing conversations from a hotel window in Morocco. It's a wonderful monologue that brings out many of the themes of the play. But unfortunately it doesn't go anywhere. Is it in her mind? Did her husband leaving her unravel her life? Is she alone? Is she depressed? We don't really know. What follows for the next three hours is a series of scenes about isolation, loneliness, detachment and mental breakdown. Some of them are pretty, some of them creepy. But none offer much insight or are weirdly imaginative enough to sustain interest in this epic. Blanchett runs the gamut of faci...
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