Theatremonkey: A Guide to London’s West End

Strangely no publisher has ever approached the Whingers with a lucrative book deal but we do not bear a grudge even when mysterious primates achieve literary success.

For at least an hour around noon on 13th November Theatremonkey: A Guide to London’s West End was apparently the 494th best selling book at Amazon.co.uk. Not only that, but it was also the NUMBER 1 best selling book in the “Cities and Towns,” “Stagecraft” and “Travel & Holiday / London, Greater London” categories.

Review – Public Property, Trafalgar Studios

A person whose life is spent hovering on the edges of the business of show and whose own name occasionally appears on the sides of buses (and who really should know better) recently, and in all seriousness, asked a Whinger “Do you have a PR?”

How we chortled.

The Whingers may be getting a little grand these days (even grander since being invited to the press night of Public Property and grand enough to turn up a day late to it) but they don’t yet have the resources to employ “people”.

If they were able to engage a publicist it certainly wouldn’t be all-round slimeball Larry De Vries, portrayed in Sam Peter Jackson’s comedy Public Property by the rather comely Nigel Harman. But well-known newsreader Geoffrey Hammond (Robert Daws) has been caught in a compromising position in a car in a lay-by with a 16 year old boy (Steven Webb**). And unlike Gillian Taylforth he wasn’t just relieving his abdominal pain. So Geoffrey really, really needs Larry’s help if he is to have any chance of saving his career.

Review – Nation by Terry Pratchett via Mark Ravenhill, National Theatre

It was all very strange. There the Whingers were at a preview of Mark Ravenhill’s adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s Nation at the National Theatre last night when who should turn up? Why, nobody they knew! Not only on the level of the individual but – largely – in a generic sense too.

Yes, there was a sprinkling of the National Theatre grey haired faithfuls but there were also conspicuous numbers of people negotiating the complexities of allocated seating seemingly for the first time.  And not a few youthful  people – teenagers, as they used to be called. Hundreds of them in fact.

It was all very strange.*

Review – The Habit of Art by Alan Bennett, National Theatre

Poetry not really being his thing, Phil had never, to his knowledge, read any W H Auden. Until last night, that is, when he read one of the celebrated poet’s works in the programme for Alan Bennett’s new play the The Habit of Art. He’s none the wiser about the poem, poetry or Auden.

Andrew, on the other hand, is far more literary having delivered a triumphant yet moving rendition of Colonel Fazackerley Butterworth-Toast as a precocious eight year old to a presumably stunned audience at the Cheltenham Festival of Performing Arts.

Phil’s closest brush with poetry was at the National Gallery’s Sitwell exhibition when he was nearly mown down by Sir Stephen Spender’s wheelchair shortly after which in the gallery’s shop he got the chance to marvel at Lady Spender’s splendid ignorance of the logistics involved in writing a cheque. He did however, once appear in a school production of Benjamin Britten’s Noye’s Fludde. Playing a wave. And he can still even sing Kyrie Eleison. And if you ask him very nicely he won’t.

All of which preamble brings the Whingers to their Monday night evening out at a preview of the most eagerly anticipated theatrical event of the year: the new Alan Bennett at the National Theatre.

Review – Fascinating Aida, Greenwich Theatre

Ok, so the Whingers may be slightly less than mildly famous for declaring their lack of interest in most things, so now is the time to declare an interest for once.

The Whingers know Adèle Anderson. Got that? Yes, poor thing. She has even displayed extraordinary compassion by turning up at all of the West End Whingers’ parties to date, performed sterling work presenting the raffle prizes and adding the touch of glamour so otherwise lacking at Whingers’ shindigs (yes, we mean YOU).

Review – Mrs Klein, Almeida Theatre

Dear Andrew,

Where are you? You don’t call, you don’t write, you don’t Twitter, have you turned into Stephen Fry? And you keep sending me off to see things on my own, it’s all rather disquieting.

I heard rumours you were spotted in Coventry earlier this week. I can quite categorically state it wasn’t me who sent you there.

By the time you receive this letter the run of Mrs Klein will probably have ended long ago and we’ll be DBEs.

It’s all beginning to look rather peculiar. The last time you sent me off to the Almeida Theatre it was Duet for One, a play set around a series of therapy sessions.

Are you trying to tell me something?

In which Phil uses his loaf for once

As readers of Time Out magazine will already know, Phil has been very busy of late. The listings magazine had (foolishly, as they no doubt now realise) challenged readers to send in pictures of London landmarks rendered in food.

The prospect of winning a bottle of Tattinger Champagne meant that Phil didn’t need asking twice and immediately set to work representing the National Theatre in bread (with an appropriate sliver of ham), that institution having swallowed quite a bit of the Whingers’ dough over the years (geddit?).

Three days of industry and this is what emerged:

Review – Terror 2009, Southwark Playhouse

There are quite a few things that really terrify the Whingers.

Phil is famously scared of heights, latterly and powerfully illustrated in Petra, Jordan (see illustration to the right) where he had to be physically prised off a rock on a particularly vertiginous ledge by not only a Jordanian guide but by two bemused Bedouin women and a very discombobulated Andrew.

But Andrew too can readily succumb to the jitters, being prone to an attack of the vapours when ever anyone says “approximate running time”, “unreserved seating”, “theatre-in-the-round”, “Pinter revival” or “last orders”.

So given the everyday anxieties of life as a Whinger, stories of theatregoers running from the theatre during performances of Terror 2009, Theatre of Horror and Grand Guignol at the Southwark Playhouse were of relatively little concern.

Review – Enron, Royal Court

Like Andrew on a weekend break, Enron comes with an absurd amount of baggage: it picked up suitcases full of rave reviews at The Chichester Festival Theatre and hat-boxes full of predictions that it will scoop Best Play in the awards season.

Its West End transfer was announced before the sold-out Royal Court season even opened. Everyone’s talking about it.

But sadly for the Whingers that pesky old Black Watch effect is back. How can anything possibly be as good as all those critics said it was? It just can’t. And so it proved to be with Enron, the story of the energy company that fooled everyone into thinking it was better than it was.

Review – Comedians, Lyric Hammersmith

‘Eres a funny thing…

Have you heard the one about the two old bloggers who dragged themselves over to the Lyric Hammersmith to see a revival of Comedians, with the heaviest of hearts having read Trevor Griffiths‘ play has a running time of 3 hours?

And they didn’t look at their watches once.

Review – The Fastest Clock in the Universe, Hampstead Theatre

Dear Andrew,

It’s been a while since I’ve felt moved to write, but I know you need something to lift you out of your grump.

I know you feel unfairly robbed of the Nobel Peace Prize despite your exhaustive efforts in the Middle East, but the good news is the Whingers are in line for an Olivier Award for the play we’re yet to write, so thanks for displaying surprising largesse and unclipping my lead for a rare solo visit to the theatre.

Can it really be that long since you allowed me out alone?  The event seems to come round faster than Christmas or our interval exits from the Cottesloe, so appropriately my trip was to the Hampstead Theatre’s revival of Philip Ridley’s The Fastest Clock in the Universe.

Review – Annie Get Your Gun, Young Vic

Roll up! Roll up! See Annie Oakley, the best little sharpshooter in the west!

Roll up! Roll up! See possibly the most misguided, misfiring musical revival to go off half cock EVER.

Roll up! Roll up! Begin to forget what showbusiness is, never mind whether or not any other business might bear some resemblance to it.

Review – Endgame, Duchess Theatre

Phil is taking to religion, believing there could possibly be a God.

Even stranger, Phil has another new perspective on the universe: that Andrew is a star twinkling brighter than any luminary treading the West End stage. Yes, it’s too much to take in, won’t last very long and you can be certain Andrew will milk this one.

The reason for this curious state of mind? Andrew rang Phil on Tuesday morning sounding as if something very, very terrible had happened. Was Too Close To The Sun being revived? No. Andrew was mumbling in a quite unnecessarily apologetic tone, “It turns out I didn’t book the tickets for the interminably long and almost  universally derided pig’s ear that is Mother Courage at the National Theatre after all.”

Having thought themselves doomed to seeing at least the first act that evening, the effect was quite astonishing. Phew! Phil’s mood lifted instantly. His metaphorical sun came out as he experienced more relief than a Swedish massage parlour. It turned out that both Whingers had been dreading it. Phil wondered why he’d agreed in the first place and Andrew had even been trying to give the (non existent) tickets away. Unsurprisingly there were no takers.

Hence they ended up at the Duchess Theatre watching Endgame instead. But to replace an evening’s Brecht with an evening’s Beckett is surely an Olympian Whingerian jump out of the frying pan and into the proverbial?

In which the Whingers pull out of Jordan

With Andrew having made disappointingly little headway with his plans to bring peace to the Middle East, travelling companion Katy having failed to emancipate the women of Jordan and Phil still traumatised by some of the toilet facilities he was forced to endure, things are gradually returning to normal following the Whingers’ retreat from Jordan.

In Which The Whingers Do Jordan

Yes, following in the footsteps of Peter Andre and an alleged unnamed celebrity* the Whingers are about to enter Jordan.

So the West End can breathe a collective sigh of relief while taking pity on Amman’s West End (should there be one) and the troops in neighbouring Iraq (should the Whingers find their inner Vera Lynns and pop over the border to entertain Our Boys).

What are they fretting about this year? Previous preoccupations with the potential perils of dengue fever or being stampeded by a herd of elephants? No. Terrorists? No.