Theatre review: Bananaman

PREVIEW DISCLAIMER: Bananaman is having its press night late in its run, presumably for reasons of Christmas.

Southwark Playhouse has looked to Japanese comics in the past for its Christmas family show, but this year it's found a superhero closer to home. Based on a character created by David Donaldson in 1980 (his first-ever comic strip is reprinted in the programme) who appeared in various British comics as well as the famous TV cartoon voiced by The Goodies, Bananaman now gets his own musical written and composed by Leon Parris. Eric Wimp (Mark Newnham) is a nerdy 16-year-old who's bullied at school and can't pluck up the courage to ask out his friend Fiona (Emma Ralston.) But one night, while he's out watching the skies, a shard from a comet falls to earth, knocking him out. When he wakes up he finds that every time he eats a banana he transforms into Bananaman (Matthew McKenna,) a superhero with the muscles of twenty men, and the brains of twenty mussels.

Theatre review: The Frogs

Well into the realm of Stephen Sondheim marginalia, it sounds as if the original 1974 version of The Frogs was never even meant as a full musical. Sondheim and Burt Shevelove took Aristophanes' comedy and built a short revue out of it, not very well-received and soon becoming an obscurity. Nathan Lane then took that revue and expanded it into a full-length show in 2004, Sondheim bulking it up with seven new songs. This, too, was poorly received and went back to being a footnote, but the Jermyn Street Theatre now gives it another try, inspired by the bleak state of current affairs that mirrors the premise of Aristophanes' original: Dionysus (Michael Matus,) god of theatre and wine among other things, despairs at the state of the world and decides people need a great mind like Bernard Shaw to boost their spirits while showing them the error of their ways.