Showing posts with label Avenue Q. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Avenue Q. Show all posts

Monday, 6 July 2026

I'd shout Hooray!

Aaaaaaarrrrgh!

After one of the loveliest of Pride weekends, the reverie is over - and reality kicks in again. sigh...

Never mind, eh?

On this Tacky Music Monday, we have some outrageous puppets to comfort us, as only they know how:

Have a good week, dear reader.

Tuesday, 17 October 2023

Why do you think the net was born?

Our internet provider BT has been playing silly buggers again for the last couple of days. As my dear old Nana would say: "Up and down, like a whore's drawers!"

While there is a brief respite... this!

The internet is for porn.
The internet is for porn.
Grab your dick and double click
For porn! Porn! Porn!
Poooorn!
Poooorn!
The internet is for,
Internet is for,
Internet is for porn!

Just not at the moment...

Monday, 23 June 2014

Fosse, gay puppets and crotch-watching in the sunshine



It was certainly a camp way to spend a Sunday afternoon - watching a succession of snippets from some of Theatreland's most lauded musicals, on stage in Trafalgar Square, in the sunshine, free of charge!

West End Live has (remarkably) been going for ten years now, and yet this was the first time (to my chagrin) I had ever been! So when Paul suggested we pop along for a bit of alfresco entertainment, I jumped at the chance to get away from boxes, boxes and more boxes everywhere in our slowly-emptying house.

It was great fun, as we caught the "Ten from Ten" slot that formed the run-up to the two-day event's grand finalé - ten classic shows that are not currently in the West End (some perhaps on tour) by ten leading performers/ensembles. Among the highlights were Leanne Jones singing Good Morning Baltimore from Hairspray, Caroline Sheen singing numbers from Mary Poppins, Charlotte Wakefield singing The Sound of Music, and Vivienne Carlyle and Stuart Boother from another sadly-missed show Blood Brothers.



A particular fave was the ebullient Jodie Prenger (a good mate of Paul O'Grady; she often sits in to present his Radio 2 show when he's away) with As Long As He Needs Me from Oliver and Secret Love from her forthcoming show Calamity Jane. [There was a mad flurry of excitement later when Miss Prenger arrived at Halfway to Heaven to catch the drag show by Crystal d'Canter and Kelly Mild!]

Oh - and the sing-along-a-Sound of Music slot, when we, and the assembled thousands in the audience, got a chance to exercise our tonsils with Do-Re-Mi was great fun, too.



Among the very best of the best, however, were the rather gorgeous Daniel Boys performing Any Dream Will Do and Close Every Door from Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat. [Never mind the songs, get yer kit off!]






...and the sexy totty brilliant cast of (birthday boy Bob Fosse's) Chicago:


...and Avenue Q:




...and Priscilla Queen of the Desert:


Campness abounds!

I shall certainly not be missing this wonderful free entertainment next year.

West End Live

Thursday, 17 April 2014

Hands up, who still has a Walkman?


One in 10 young people has bought a music cassette tape in the last month, a new survey done to coincide with Record Store Day suggests.

The research suggests that physical formats are still more popular than digital downloads.

"There's definitely a novelty value with cassettes at the moment, particularly as we suspect a high proportion of them are collectibles sitting on a shelf and never played," said Maurice Fyles, who worked on the research ahead of Record Store Day.

Over half of the people who do this bought a vinyl record, 48% a CD and 23% an audio cassette tape that they have no intention of ever listening to.

"Perhaps it's a reaction to the digital world, but physical formats that we might have thought were relegated to history are being revived as fans and collectors opt for limited editions and promotional copies of their favourite music across a range of formats."
Read more on the BBC

And here's an appropriate song from the marvellous Avenue Q - it's Mix Tape:


By way of coincidence, Avenue Q - which we went to see back in 2007 - returns to London for a limited run next week at the Greenwich Theatre.

Saturday, 27 September 2008

Ban it!



As dear Daniel Radcliffe celebrates the debut of his dick on Broadway (as Equus opens there this week) we too can celebrate a milestone.

For today is the 40th anniversary of the triumphal lifting of the control of the censors over British theatre. Amazingly this remarkable law, brought in in 1737 to counter the rise of satirical drama and reinforced (unsurprisingly) by the Victorians, made it illegal for any new or adapted play to be performed without the permission of the Lord Chamberlain - until 1968.

According to an excellent article by Michael Billington in What's On Stage: "Over the years, plays by Sophocles, Ibsen and Shaw were subject to bans. Both A View from the Bridge and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof had to be staged in London, initially, under members-only "club" conditions to evade the censor."

Read his article

Unbelievable, really, in this day and age. The first controversial performance in London - staged one day after the ban was lifted - was the hippy musical Hair, which became an overnight success.

Nowadays of course we hardly bat an eyelid to controversy (unless of course you happen to be a fan of Mary Whitehouse, a member of the Christian Voice bunch of bigots, or write for the Daily Mail), and here are a few examples of theatrical successes we might never have otherwise seen:






Phew