Putting London’s West End theatre to rights. Phil and Andrew begrudgingly cut into their wine time to tell you whether it’s worth missing the Merlot for the Marlowe.
If for some degenerate reason you want to find out how to have The Whingers©™®* eating out of your hand then toddle off to the Menier Chocolate Factory for a case study.
Those clever people behind Forbidden Broadway have discovered the secret. We predict producers, writers and directors will be flocking to see this somewhat Anglicised version of the long running American spoof of Broadway shows to find out how it’s done. Read the rest of this entry »
Six young actors and dancers successfully audition for a part in a nude review. It’s A Chorus Line with knobs on. Read the rest of this entry »
It seemed particularly perverse of Andrew to come hot foot (or, rather, frozen foot but that’s enough of Andrew’s unsavoury medical details) from his long-suffering podiatrist to the Young Vic last night
The Whingers aren’t normally keen on promenade performances, famously preferring the comfort and reliability of numbered seats and a resting place for their luxuriant derrières.
But Sound&Fury’s Kursk in collaboration with Bryony “More Light” Lavery had come highly recommended and so go they had to even though (or especially though from Phil’s viewpoint) it meant Andrew was going to have to suffer for his art. For the interventions of the chiropodist had come on the heels of a traumatic gardening mishap only days before in which Andrew’s attempts to hang some gazebo lights ended in tragedy and although he didn’t mention it, Phil did feel that Andrew’s cuts and bruises were probably some divine retribution for someone without a gazebo above their station. Read the rest of this entry »
The Whingers have been very quiet indeed since last Tuesday. For the last seven days the only sounds you might have heard from them would have been the whirring and clunking of their addled brains as they puzzled and worried and plotted to explain the tricks behind Derren Brown’s quite extraordinary Enigma now showing at the Adelphi Theatre.
It may not surprise you to learn that their combined intellectual and analytical efforts has resulted in nothing. Nada. Not a sausage. We are as mystified today as we were when we emerged blinking into The Strand a week ago. It is, indeed, an enigma. Read the rest of this entry »
How the Whingers long for Ethel Merman.
They long for her perpetually but on Monday they were specifically longing for her “the show must go on” spirit: La Merman apparently never missed performances and was famously understudied by Elaine Stritch even though she was already appearing in another show, so confident were they that Merman would never be “off”
Now anyone can get an ailment. And even the Whingers have succumbed to the occasional sniffle (usually when watching Imitation of Life). And Andrew is, of course, a slave to his feet. Read the rest of this entry »
The Whingers would love to recommend Michael Strassen’s production of Sondheim’s Company at the Union Theatre.
But the chances of you getting a ticket now are less than those Labour has of winning a election if one were called tomorrow (the run ends this Saturday 13th June). Unless of course one of the six producers (plus Miss Kazonga 2008, Ruthie Henshall) who were in the house last night decide to stump up some cash and transfer it to the West End.
It wouldn’t be a bad decision - the toilet arrangements would almost certainly be superior in its new home. Read the rest of this entry »
Phedre or Phèdre? The National Theatre’s website can’t seem to decide whether to opt for the grave accent or not.
And while we’re talking about the vacillations of the NT, when did The Royal National Theatre revert to being just a plain old National Theatre again? Nobody told us. Has Her Maj stopped popping over to the South Bank to get her fill of the classics or does she feel that with Helen Mirren DBE in residence no one will miss her?
Well it may not be Royal any more but the Whingers were feeling utterly regal and like proverbial pigs in a Caryl Churchill play last night when they arrived to see Ted Hughes’ version of Jean Racine’s Greek tragedy. For they found themselves with the prospect of an evening spent in the company of two theatrical Dames of the British Empire and a proscenium arch.
Yes two Dames! One either side of the proscenium! They were in Dame heaven. Read the rest of this entry »
The most magical evening’s entertainment of the year took place on Saturday and the Whingers demand that something dreary be moved out of a West End theatre so that the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain and the BFI can take up residency there. Would anyone really miss Marilyn?
Read Helen Smith’s account of Ukulelescope and weep if you missed it.
Is it theatre? Yes, as much as wandering around an old tunnel looking at some nick nacks. More so, in fact – you get to sit down. And in allocated seats.
Ukulelescope will rise again for the Litchfield Festival (we’re not making this up) on 14th and 15th July but we hereby demand that the whole thing then come back to London and plonk itself down in the West End of London for a minimum of six weeks.
Anyway, if you were lucky enough to be there you may wish to revisit a few of the silent films you saw. Of course, they are less engaging than they were on Saturday when they had the wit and musicianship of the UOGB laid over them, but even so…
Ladies On Bicycles (1899)
London Street Scenes (1903)
A Kiss In The Tunnel (1899)
Who could have envisaged that Phil would get to direct Mr Jude Law in Mr Shakespeare’s Hamlet in the auspicious Donmar West End season?
For in an implausible and rather Shakespearean case of mistaken identity that’s how it seemed on Tuesday night.* During the interval Phil bumped into someone he’d met on a work trip a couple of years ago who turned to her companion and introduced Phil with the words “This is Michael Grandage, the director”.
How Phil wished he had carried on the conceit but Andrew was laughing at the idea too much. The woman was quite insistent “But you look just like him.”
Ah well, put it down to it being the hottest night of the year or perhaps the fact that Phil had walked head first into a plate glass window in Spain a few days earlier and radically altered his facial features (considerably for the better, clearly). Read the rest of this entry »
The Bridge Project. What’s that all about then?* It’s an unprecedented three-year, transatlantic partnership uniting The Old Vic with Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Neal Street Productions which turns out not to be where Andrew buys his cheese, as he thought, but director Sam Mendes‘ production company (Shrek the Musical etc).
What it really means is we get to see cheese and chalk Simon Russell Beale and Ethan Hawke on stage together Tom Stoppard’s new adaptation of Ibsen’s The Cherry Orchard (they’re also doing The Winter’s Tale but one unprecedented transatlantic production is enough for the Whingers). Read the rest of this entry »
Ostensibly because they know so many people (but in fact because they increasingly struggle to dredge up names) the Whingers have evolved a language to aid conversation.
For example: to be clear which Paul is under discussion one refers either to “Toaster Paul” (who won a toaster at the first West End Whingers party) or to “Salad Spinner Paul” (can’t remember quite why now).
So it was a shame that Phil (”Anal Phil” due to his neurotic fastidiousness vis a vis hygiene in particular and life in general) was unable to make Bryony Lavery’s More Light at the Arcola because the main characters are all named according to a similar schema: Moist Moss, Playful Kitten, Love Mouth and so on.
“Is she that weather girl?” If the Whingers had a pound for every time they have been asked that over the last few weeks the would have three pounds by now.
Perhaps that weather girl might have warned them not to be so foolish as to book a late May matinee of anything.
But there was no weather girl to advise them and so it was that on the hottest Sunday afternoon of the year the Whingers found themselves in the sweltering, subterranean Pizza On The Park. Read the rest of this entry »
The Whingers were once described by someone quite influential as “moderately influential” but the truth of this throwaway remark was stretched – like the waistband on Andrew’s elasticated slacks – to breaking point when it came to obtaining tickets for Waiting For Godot.
The Whingers had talked about seeing it on tour before it came to the Theatre Royal Haymarket but just didn’t get around to it, there being no teams of horses wild enough to drag Phil back into the provinces.
So the Whingers decided to call in a few favours. But it’s funny how people who “owed them one” suddenly suddenly stopped returning their calls. One (and he knows who he is) went as far as laughing in Phil’s face. Imagine that.
Things were getting desperate.
Phil hatched a plan to get elected as an MP, fork out cash to a tout and charge it as an expense, disguising it amidst his general ornamental duck house-related receipts if necessary. Andrew even considered the possibility of stalking and then seducing someone connected with the show, perhaps in a ghastly travesty of Mrs Robinson. But Phil believed this plan was likely to go tits-up by the time it got to the soft music and négligée and probably long before that. Read the rest of this entry »
What is it about the X-factor?
Put the X-Men in a production of Waiting for Godot at the Haymarket and it’s impossible to get a ticket. Put Scully from The X Files in A Doll’s House at the Donmar and up go the “queue here for returns” signs*. Perhaps a clever producer should put lippy X-Factor judge Simon Cowell in, well, lippie for La Cage Aux Folles and wait for a stampede to the box office**.
Anyway, Zinnie Harris has written a new adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s timeless tale about a woman who leaves her husband and children, slamming the door behind her. Read the rest of this entry »
The Whingers are rarely offered owt fer nowt. But when it happens they are scrupulous about declaring their freebies.
Mind you, They have never had the luxury of having their swimming pools or moats freshened for nothing. Nor have they ever claimed for their ratcatchers or helipads. They guarantee that all maintenance of their drawbridges has come directly from their own pockets. They can’t even recall ever having owned (let alone sat on) a glittery loo seat although they may have occupied the occasional pouffe. But they would definitely sit in the stalls and chomp through their Maltesers at the taxpayers expense – given half a chance.
And we’re told we produce enough manure as it is without needing more of it for free.
So anyway it was a rare treat when the surely misguided people behind Jeff Harnar’s American Songbook in London invited the Whingers to see Two Birds And A Bloke at Pizza on the Park for free, gratis, like critics. Mind you, we paid for our own pizza and wine so we might as well have paid top whack for Priscilla.
Our dreams of “special guest” status were quickly punctured when we found ourselves placed at a table at the back. Andrew did some half-hearted moaning about not being able to see very well but it turned out to be this table or one behind a big plant. It turned out to be something of a blessing. Read the rest of this entry »
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