Review - Pygmalion, The Old Vic

“There must be something radically wrong about the play if it pleases everybody, but at the moment I cannot find what it is.”

Shaw’s comment on his own Pygmalion is one of the few kinds of challenge to which the West End Whingers feel they can confidently rise so they were eagerly anticipating their evening at Peter Hall’s revival at the Old Vic and - to save precious drinking time later - had already scrawled “too long!!!!” and “squeaking seats” in their notebooks.

Review - The Good Soul of Szechuan with Jane Horrocks, Young Vic

Picture it. A school in some forgotten corner of rural England many, many years ago.

A fresh-faced, young boy takes his first tentative steps into the spotlight. A green one, as it happens.

He is thrilled. He is wearing a dress. He is a god.

To be specific, he is Third God (there is no fourth) in Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Soul of Szechuan.

That young boy - hard as it is to picture looking at him now - was Phil.

Review - The Year of Magical Thinking with Vanessa Redgrave, National Theatre

The Whingers thought this would be the one for them.

Phil only agreed to see it as he’d misread the title as The Year of Magical Drinking, and assumed he would be watching something he could relate to at last. The Whingers have spent many years drinking thus.

But thinking? That’s something they take great pains to avoid. It only leads to madness.

Review - Marguerite - The Musical! at the Theatre Royal Haymarket

It’s not every day you get a chance to see the kazongas of the person who won the Theatregoers’ Award for the Most Popular Musical Actress in The Last 21 Years (or one of her kazongas, anyway).

But that was the surprising position the West End Whingers found themselves in at a preview of the new musical Marguerite ( - The Musical!).

Review - Natural Selection at Theatre 503

“Dear Blogger, Here at Theatre503 and Whippet Productions, we’re big fans of internet blogging and really value the opinions of people, like yourself, on plays, musicals and other theatre in London. In light of this fact, we’d like to try something new. We’d like to invite YOU to come and see our latest production - Natural Selection at Theatre503 - on Press Night: Friday 9 May, 8pm.”

Clearly the email was intended for some other London theatre bloggers as no-one values the opinions of the West End Whingers, not even the West End Whingers.

Review - Tinderbox, Bush Theatre

Why, oh why, oh why don’t people just ask us before they go around putting on plays willy nilly?

It would save an awful lot of strife, time, expense, trouble and suffering in the long run.

The Very Worst Musicals - No 1. Carrie (an appreciation)

With Andrew traipsing round former Yugoslavia (getting himself in the mood for another Eastern European Eurovision Song Contest victory), the Whingers are on a much needed break from bad theatre. This leaves Phil free to mull (inspired by the satisfying panning of Gone With the Wind) over the very worst shows he’s had the pleasure to experience.

It’s a long list, among the mouth-watering contenders: Jean Seberg, Leonardo the Musical: A Portrait of Love, Metropolis and Jeeves (the original 1975 version), but standing like a beacon of kitsch above the rest is that now legendary spectacle of Carrie - The Musical. (Dubiously ambiguous poster right)

In which the Whingers are shouted at

So there was Phil twiddling his thumbs on the top deck of the number 9 having given up on a killer sudoku when he received a call from an even-less-coherent-than-normal Andrew. Apparently the West End Whingers were mentioned on something called Capital Radio this morning.

Every One’s a Winner

A final (for now) post about the party.

Review - Harper Regan at the National Theatre

As the Whingers snook out of the Cottesloe the other night Andrew - for once - raised an interesting point: “Perhaps we don’t really like theatre” he mused.

Things are certainly looking rocky. The love-hate relationship with the West End which characterised the Whingers’ giddy heydays seems now to be more like simple bitter enmity.

Perhaps the relationship analogy is the wrong one; maybe it is more like a sport. In which case the score over the last few weeks now stands at Theatre: 4 Whingers: 0. With a record like this, wouldn’t your morale be low?

In fact, Andrew proposed that the review for Harper Regan at the National Theatre should simply read: “Move along, folks. Nothing to see here.”

Review - Fram at the National Theatre

All credit to the National: they never are averse
To staging something radical and this play is in verse!

It’s written by a Harrison and Tony is his name -
Our “foremost theatre poet” so the NT website claims.

We tried to name some others but our efforts were in vain
And do not recommend it for a fun-filled drinking game.

Review - Small Change at the Donmar Warehouse

To be fair, Small Change at the Donmar Warehouse was never going to be the Whingers’ cup of cabernet.

We are easily enough confused as it is and Andrew’s memory plays enough tricks on him as it is without the added complication of plays getting in on the game.

It also didn’t help that - thanks to the swathes of poetic, descriptive monologues - Andrew spent most of Act 1 vacillating between oblivion and semi-wakefulness (but mostly the former). During his dozing, he had very strange dreams which on waking he believed momentarily to have been part of the play. In a strange way, writer/director Peter Gill might rather have approved.

West End Whingers Second Annual Party. Part 2.

And here are the pics to prove it really happened.

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The West End Whingers Second Annual Party. Part 1.

The West End Whingers would like to thank the crowds who turned up for the West End Whingers party last night and apologies to those who were unable to get in or were turned away due to the rather eccentric door policy.

This is the first of many, many posts aimed not only at those who were unable to make it (such as Kevin Spacey) or weren’t invited (such as Nicholas Hytner - nothing personal but he did get invited last year and we have to spread ourselves around), but also just to milk the gags for all they are worth, if not frurther.

Anyway, as it was we weren’t able to talk to everyone who was there. This was due to a combination of factors such as Merlot and Shiraz.

And also because our plan to give guests that authentic Al Hirschfeld experience backfired a bit.

We had engaged the services of a caricaturist. We couldn’t actually get the actual Al Hirschfeld because he died in 2003. Instead we had Adrian Grubb who probably worked out a bit cheaper anyway.

Perhaps we should have anticipated it, but unfortunately everyone insisted on being drawn with the Whingers so we spent most of the evening sitting being drawn. Quite tedious really.

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Review - Gone With The Wind - The Musical! (Act 2) at the New London Theatre

Now, do you promise that you’ve ploughed your way through our account of Act 1? Then you may proceed.