Theatre review: The Frogs

Director Georgie Rankcom seems to have established a very specific niche: Revivals of Stephen Sondheim obscurities that I'd previously seen at Jermyn Street Theatre, given bigger, better productions at Southwark Playhouse that still aren't enough to rehabilitate them. After Anyone Can Whistle it's the turn of The Frogs, Sondheim (music and lyrics) and Burt Shevelove's (book) short 1974 adaptation of the Aristophanes satire, expanded to a full Broadway musical by the composer and Nathan Lane in 2004. In a setting that's simultaneously Ancient Greece and the present day, the god of wine and theatre Dionysos (Dan Buckley) enlists his slave Xanthias (Kevin McHale) to help him travel to the underworld to bring back the deceased playwright Bernard Shaw: He believes Shaw's no-nonsense brand of wisdom is the solution to a modern world he despairs at.

Theatre review: Afterglow

There’s nothing unusual about a gay-themed play heavily promoting itself on the fact that it features male nudity, although there’s a couple of promising signs that suggest Afterglow might be a bit different from the majority: Tom O’Brien’s production is being staged at Southwark Playhouse, one of the most successful and well-respected London fringe venues; it appears to have an actual budget; the actors are in fact real actors who have had previous professional acting experience as actors, possibly even being paid for it*; as well as being people you might actually want to see naked, and indeed being the same people as featured on the show’s poster. All these are radical departures from what we’re used to, and they successfully put Afterglow a cut above a lot of the theatre served to niche gay audiences, but how does it fare compared to fringe theatre more broadly?

Theatre review: Wasted

"Fuck off, I'm writing Jane Eyre."

The success of Hamilton on both sides of the Atlantic means musical theatre throwing distinctly anachronistic musical styles at historical figures are all the rage, so it's a pleasure to report that even with all that going on Wasted feels pleasingly original - and bonkers. The Brontës were a quartet of troubled artists who didn't fit into the world they were born into, faced romantic problems and drug addiction, but briefly became a popular sensation (and hugely controversial because of the bad influence they might have on their fans) before fizzling out and dying young. At least that's how Carl Miller (book and lyrics) and Christopher Ash (music) see them, framing their show as a Behind the Music documentary about a band who barely made it past one-hit-wonders, and interviewing Charlotte - the last left alive, having given up writing and married a dull curate - about what went wrong.