Wouldn’t life be easier if none of us were adults with responsibilities, but we all became random items from a toy box? Pedro for example lives for dressing up as dairy cow Daisy whose only worry is on which side of the meadow the grass is greener and if her friend Darren, a locomotive, passes … Continue reading Not so happy after all – Offstage at the Tristan Bates Theatre in Covent Garden
I always respected Tina Turner more for her voice, her energetic attitude and age-refusing charisma than for the music played by the mainstream radio stations. GoldenEye was her only song I would turn up and no one ever played her early rock stuff or The Acid Queen from The Who’s 1974 musical film Tommy we … Continue reading A rock history’s journey to happiness – Tina the Musical at the Aldwych Theatre
Kill Climate Deniers deserves its hype for sure: Following the Australian Environment Minister and her PR advisor to a Fleetwood Mac concert at which the audience is being taken hostage by a group of radical climate activists is sharp, witty and scarily relevant for obvious reasons. Before the action starts, we hear interview snippets of … Continue reading Please believe the hype, this play is important: Kill Climate Deniers at The Pleasance
I gave up years ago on trying to explain to my fellow Londoners the very German phenomena the Berlin punk group Die Ärzte is – because seeing them giving a club concert here at the Electric Ballroom is a personal triumph I have not bothered bringing anyone. That is anyone who could spoil the evening … Continue reading There is only one god: BelaFarinRod – Die Ärzte in Camden’s Electric Ballroom
The build up to seeing this classic of modern staged drama goes along with many giggles. Finally, I’ve found someone to see Samuel Beckett’s most famous play with: Waiting For Godot. Because we are in Bavaria’s capital, we see the German translation. And luckily, spoken in the clearest high German, not in the local dialect. I am sure the two Cantonese-speaking students … Continue reading Samuel Beckett’s Warten Auf Godot at the Volkstheater in Munich
Seeing an ensemble of six actors at the same time in a small space like the Hope Theatre above the Hope & Anchor pub in Islington is rare. But in this tale about Max – who lost his girlfriend Tess in a car crash he and his brother Chris survived – the stage seems never … Continue reading Still thinking about it: Testament by Sam Edmunds at the Hope Theatre
It is high time to kick off the sunny season and because summer is a mindset, I smilingly agreed to see Summer Street, a musical parody of Australian soap operas, at the Waterloo East Theatre. It is a new off-west end venue for me and given I spent over five years commuting almost every day … Continue reading Bringing Australian sunshine to London: Summer Street at the Waterloo East Theatre
That I have not seen the West End production of Les Misérables so far surprises plenty of people, even those I did not expect to have any opinion on this. Myself astonished by this repeated reaction I look even more forward to it. Seated between the massive M&M shopping bags of Chinese tourists wearing surgical … Continue reading Finally watching a long forgotten favourite: Les Misérables at the Queen’s Theatre
Sir Quentin Blake is without doubt Britain’s most famous illustrator – even me growing up in Hamburg knew thanks to Roald Dahl’s BFG his drawing of Queen Elizabeth II before I knew Andy Warhol’s version. I have not come across Blake’s own children stories before though and therefore happily follow the invitation to the Librarian … Continue reading Heartwarmingly family-friendly: The Green Ship by Quentin Blake in London’s Librarian Theatre
The season of summer is generously applied at London’s Southbank once the Underbelly stage has been erected – this means summer lasts at the river Thames from April until September. In its 11th year this stable in the capital’s calendar has over 140 performances and events scheduled and one of the highlights already from the … Continue reading Punk cabaret defining this year’s summer in London – Little Death Club at the Southbank’s Underbelly
