Saturday 24 October 2015

The Showstoppers present Where's Runnicles, the song

Our friend, and former contributor to this blog, Andrew Pugsley is currently appearing in the west end with The Showstoppers. If you're unfamiliar, it's an astonishing and hilarious improvised musical, based on suggestions from the audience. We maybe a little biased, but have seen it many times at the Edinburgh fringe and can thoroughly recommend it. See review here.

We donated some money to their recent crowdfunding campaign to help with their London run. In return, they made us this fun video answering a question we've asked from time to time. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.


Friday 16 October 2015

Teddy Ferrara at the Donmar, or, Another Failed Issue Play

Note: A slightly delayed review of the performance on Friday 9th October 2015.

The penultimate scene of this dull overlong play offers a fleeting glimpse of what might have been. The central character, Gabe (Luke Newberry), in emotional turmoil, seeks sex in a public toilet with potentially serious consequences. It's virtually the only moment in the evening when the oppressive environment for the GLBT community on the unnamed university campus which Christopher Shinn's text goes on and on about actually feels emotionally real. Unfortunately the rest of the play gets nowhere near this.

In advance I suspected the play might be a classic issues lecture. There are certainly elements of this, and they work about as well as such things in live theatre usually work. But as it turns out this is not the play's main problem which is three fold – a multiplicity of strands which never fully cohere, the shallowly drawn nature of the characters (most of whom feel like types rather than potentially real people) and the lack of emotional punch.