Arts GOTTA SING, GOTTA DANCE : Devonshire Park Theatre, Eastbourne: Review: Five stars It was, to be frank, a bit of a new experience to be in a packed Devonshire Park Theatre for the press night of their new summer show, Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance. I’m usually the youngest one in half an audience, but not this time. Full (young) house ahoy! Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance returns this […] By Kat Pope • 4 min read
Reviews ALICE IN WONDERLAND: Iris Theatre, Covent Garden: Review Nonsense stories are never the easiest thing to stage, even when it’s the most famous nonsense story of them all, so it’s brave of Iris Theatre to give it a go and quite a coup to pull it off as well as they have this hot, sultry summer. Set in and around the lovely St […] By Kat Pope • 3 min read
Arts THE DROWNED MAN from Punchdrunk: Review Punchdrunk. What a fantastic name for a company. I mean, you really can’t beat it. As theatre groups go, they picked the doozy out of the barrel. And it sums up what they do too: disorientate with a carefully aimed theatrical punch to the nose, making everything just that little bit gin-blurred at t By Kat Pope • 17 min read
Julie Andrews appears in the 1965 film “The Sound of Music.” (Gannett News Service/Fox Video/File) Film Eastbourne is alive with the Sound of Music It’s not every day you can don a Nazi uniform and wander through the streets of Eastbourne with a good reason. I don’t recommend it, but you’d have an excuse if stopped by the police: “But officer, I’m off to the Hippodrome for their Film Party Night. You can’t arrest me. I’m being artistically iron By Kat Pope • 1 min read
Arts TITANIC: Southwark Playhouse: Review This is the first professional outing in London for this five times Tony award winning musical which took Broadway by storm in 1997, and Titanic certainly lives up to its name. It’s a huge musical to fit onto the ‘large’ stage at Southwark Playhouse, even with David Woodhead’s ingenious use of the s By Kat Pope • 4 min read
Theatre WEST END BARES ALL FOR CHARITY Once a year, in the name of charity, the most gorgeous performers from the West End trot along to the Cafe de Paris for a night of debauched fun and frolics and on September 1 you could be joining them. Run by the Make a Difference Trust (MAD), West End Bares is a glorious night […] By Kat Pope • 2 min read
Reviews A TRIBUTE TO NUREYEV: English National Ballet at the Coliseum: Review As this is only the second ballet I’ve seen recently (the first being an accidental brush with Carlos Acosta a few years ago) I came at this piece pretty green. So please don’t expect any great treatise on what was good and what was bad about either the dancing or the music. Instead, I’ll be […] By Kat Pope • 6 min read
Theatre MY GAY BEST FRIEND: Emporium: Review It’s not often that I see a piece of theatre that makes me cry with laughter one minute and then just cry the next, but My Gay Best Friend managed it easily and I walked out of the Emporium with a tear still in my eye. Racquell and Gavin are best friends. Both work in […] By Kat Pope • 3 min read
Theatre TROUSER-WEARING CHARACTERS: Emporium, Brighton: Review Let’s Misbehave plays as we take our seats, setting the scene nicely for the one-woman show to follow. “Trouser-wearing characters are born, not made,” exclaims Rose Collis, writer, historian and performer, steering clear of the ‘G’ word. No, her horizons are broader than just queers. Rose is talki By Kat Pope • 3 min read
News COMPETITION: Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance Eastbourne Theatres this week are celebrating the opening of their summer musical extravaganza, GOTTA SING, GOTTA DANCE, and they have given Gscene a couple of pairs of tickets to give away, so read on, answer the easy question at the end and you could be going to the opening night! Celebrating the By Kat Pope • 1 min read
Theatre JOSEPHINE AND I: Bush Theatre: Review The fantastically monickered Cush Jumbo is a girl with twin passions. They’re passions she’s had from when she were a nipper, and those passions are Josephine Baker and performing on stage. In Josephine and I she combines them to dazzling effect. The scene is a 1920’s St Louis nightclub and we’re si By Kat Pope • 3 min read
News THE BOAT FACTORY: King’s Head Theatre: Review The Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast will always be best know to those on the outside as the factory that built the Titanic, but Happenstance Theatre Company’s latest piece gives you the skinny from the inside. Writer Dan Gordon plays Davy Gordon, a worker in the ‘Boat Factory’, perhaps a relat By Kat Pope • 2 min read
