A Small Mind At The Theatre

With a waft of the fairy godmother's magic wand I found myself by special command at the Royal & Derngate for this years Cinderella. Now much like Shakespeare, pantomimes are not my greatest love and in the case of these why should they be, I am not really in their target audience. However in either supportive of the writers/actors or by the aforementioned command, I found myself at this, the second of three scheduled for the 2015 season. Cinderella is without doubt the biggest, brightest and most expensive looking pantomime that I have seen. You can literally see the pound notes being thrown at the stage as the audience is treated to a visual feast from props, sets and a spectacular auditorium light show (and snow). It has to be said though that its looks are a lot better than the script and performances are. While they are earnest, there is an edge of disappointment from the performances of many of the stars in the cast, and its not all the blame of the script. The star b...

So with alert level set to pink and at camp factor ten, I ventured to the Southwark Playhouse for Xanadu. Originally produced on Broadway in 2007 it is perhaps surprising that a musical featuring the music of British born Jeff Lynne (Electric Light Orchestra) alongside John Farrar has taken so long to get to the stage in the UK. However those eight years have been worth the wait as this production for such a small London venue is of devastating quality, with a cast and crew at the top of their game and surely destined for the West End. The film itself starring Olivia Newton-John and Gene Kelly is a rather average musical fantasy blessed  with a quality soundtrack. Therefore for the stage version it was perhaps wise to make this an outrageous comedy and send up (the many) flaws of the original film. Constantly poking fun at the film and indeed itself, this is one of the funniest stage productions I have had the pleasure to see. The reoccurring theme of Kira (Carly Anderson) having...