Laney dragged me along to see the most random show tonight “A Guide To Sexual Misery”. Wolfgang Weinberger, professional sexologist, was aiming to answer any and all questions about sexual relations and why, quite often, it goes wrong!

I wasn’t really sure what I was in for – was it going to be like Your Days are Numbered: Maths and Death, a presentation using statistics to demonstrate why a large percentage of our population was due for sexual misery?, was there going to be embarrassing crowd-participation moments? was it sex therapy? was I going to be laughing? was I going to be laughed at?

Turns out that it was a bit of a combination of everything. Wolfgang is at heart an academic with a degree in economic and MA in Filmmaking. Very random then that he should turn to this particular topic without much academia to support him. The show contained mostly clichéd presumptions, generalisations and reactions about sex. He tried to get the crowd involved by asking us questions like “does size matter”, “do you masturbate more than once a day/daily/weekly/monthly” … this was after separating the men from the women to give a kind of wall of silence between partners with humming being our way of secret voting. Hmmm … not that anonymous really! This part was rather awkward to say the least!

Having said all that I couldn’t help but laugh for most of the show, albeit nervously at times! I don’t think the show would have been half as funny if it hadn’t been presented by someone like Wolfgang, who was endearing in his bumbling way and his Austrian accent. I wouldn’t recommend this show for anyone actually seeking answers to resolve their sexual misery but you will, at least for 90 minutes, be entertained.

I deliberately didn’t read any reviews of Ghost Stories beforehand so as not to create any expectations before seeing it. Nevertheless, I couldn’t prevent myself from having expectations of. Its very title promised so much, not to mention all the posters and adverts I’d seen for it all over the place, claiming it was an amazing and astonishing play.

To our disappointment the show didn’t quite deliver.

I have some difficulty in writing up tonight’s experience as I don’t really want to give anything away. Suffice to say there are a few scares but mostly a lot of laughs – whether or not it was intentionally poking our funny bone was another matter. I think my greatest issue with the show was that I couldn’t see where it was going – where the title implied one thing, the show headed in a different direction altogether.

The show had an extremely slow start and the first third easily could have been developed differently. Strangely throughout the show we lost a lot of people to toilet visits. Come on people – you can’t hold it for 90 minutes!

What I did like was a the ending – it kind of reminded me of Inception in some ways …

Burn the Floor is literally what the performers do in this show – they are so hot and quick and energetic in their movements that I’m surprised the stage didn’t go up in flames! There is no real story line to Burn the Floor except that you should expect to see every form of ballroom dance you know showcased on stage.

Mainly professional dancers in the cast, there is also Ali Bastian, from Hollyoaks, who was apparently known for hooking up in real life with professional Brian Fortuna during a season of dancing together on Strictly Come Dancing. They perform in a few acts together though the fact Ali isn’t a professional (the couples in the cast actually come from all over the world, including Australia!) unfortunately comes through when contrasted with the other professionals.

Overall an entertaining evening.

Topping off a very long day of activities we settled into the front row at Tap Dogs.

There’s no use pretending that we were at the show for any other reason then to check out the hot bods including our very own Adam Garcia.

Waiting for us on our front row seat were these:

Uh oh!!

The question was – were we cool enough not to wear them and risk a soaking, or could we wear the poncho and still be cool. Discretion being the better part of valour we all wisely donned the poncho at the appropriate time.

Tap Dogs doesn’t really try to be anything more than what it says on the tin – a group of dudes with big chunky boots tapping and moving their way around, on, above the stage and various other props. There’s humour and little stories (only to the extent of giving us some context of the relationships between the tappers) but mostly there is a lot of stomping. Many of the acts were creative, such as a basket ball scene, the water scene, an upside down tapping scene (now that is mad skill) and literal sparks in another scene. The tapping was HOT with a lot of tap-offs and joking around between the men on stage. Very entertaining for the ladies ….

The best part of the night, however, was getting to meet the man himself …

… followed by drinks with the cast at the pub across the road!

Outside theatre is always fun and the weather in London has been surprisingly conducive to it this season. Roops organised for a few of us to head out King’s Cross Street way to check out Electric Hotel – Electric for the neon-lit structure upon which we gaze to discover the goings on in the private lives of those residing inside. Against a backdrop of the gas holder and a setting sun the drama of the show was perfectly captured … though I’m not going to pretend to understand I understood what was actually going on!

We were handed giant headsets upon entering the show which made our voyeurism that much more intimate. Being a dance performance there wasn’t a lot of dialogue to listen to but the headsets were important for the music and the atmosphere.

It was certainly an innovative idea and individually and as a group the performers were excellent. Dancing in separate rooms I’m not sure how they managed to keep their timing but I didn’t see any mis-step at all – and in a show like tonight’s timing was absolutely crucial.

My only problem with the show was that I couldn’t understand what was going on – I still have no idea what the courier had to do with it, nor the random thieves, nor the pool at the top. I think it was supposed to be some sort of thriller (because I certainly felt there was always some sort of overhanging evil) with intertwined relationships but it was a bit hard to interpret who meant what to whom etc. The story is run once, then repeated again and again – each time from a different perspective with something slightly different happening every time.

For me this was one of those performances where it was better not to try and understand the story but to just go with the flow and enjoy the skills of the dancers and the choreographer.

This show was anything but fantastic for me I’m afraid. Supposedly one of the longest-running musicals of all time tonight’s performance had its moments but for the most part I just couldn’t wait to get out of there.

The story is a kind of Romeo and Juliet in reverse – fathers of neighbouring youngsters fall upon an idea that in order to get their children together they needed to concoct a fued between the families. Teenagers, after all, are known best for rebelling against what their parents want and if their parents don’t want them to get together, then inevitably they’ll find some way to do so. To ensure the romance moves forward the fathers even go so far as to hire a magician, possibly the only character in the whole play that you could like, to “abduct” the daughter so the boy could “rescue” her. It goes well until the end of the first half before the ploy slowly unravels afterwards.

Characters are unsavoury and though the actors try hard they end up being more annoying than endearing. I did like the simplicity of the stage and the use of a dancer to embody the changes in scenery.