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).

But if anyone wants to kick up a fuss about bias, then read our reviews of Unstated: Stories of Refuge and Tinderbox where we also knew someone connected with a production. We may be cheap, but we’re not that easily bought. Though Andrew is, of course, procurable for a large glass of merlot.

And if you don’t know who Adèle is then it’s high time you acquainted yourself with the satirical cabaret act Fascinating Aïda. Goodness – like the Whingers (and especially Phil) – they’ve been around long enough. 25 years to be less than exact. Except that as they point out themselves it’s actually 26, but “25th Anniversary Tour” has a nicer ring.

With Andrew still mysteriously AWOL, Phil griped about assaying to the Greenwich Theatre on a cheerless November Sunday evening, delving into the rag-bag of excuses he normally trots out for the more susceptible Andrew. But John – the facilitator of this trip – was seeing members of his cortège dropping out faster than a flasher’s appendage, and he was having none of it.

So it would take a abundance of tip-top entertainment to make Phil feel the peregrination had been remunerative. Unlike Andrew who saw FA last year (when it really was their Silver Jubilee), Phil hadn’t seen them since 1987 when they did a residency at the Piccalilli Theatre. Andrew had second-string royalty in the audience when he last saw them, Phil had to make do with Lady Skipper – who affects quite a regal air – but it wasn’t quite the same and another story altogether.

So it was considerable amelioration for Phil that he was thoroughly diverted, and unlike his trip to the Almeida the previous day was able to cachinnate with impunity.

Founder member Dillie Keane, Liza Pulman and Adèle who make up FA are not only still at the top of their game, they’re above it. Terrific troupers with expert comedy material and timing - even their admonition to switch off pesky mobile phones was almost as droll as the one at Terror 2009 at the Southwark Playhouse.

From the opening number about celebrities they mocked their subjects with gusto. Global warming, health and safety, a brilliant number explaining the current pecuniary situation (which is much funnier than anything Enron can come up with), a hilariously rude song about dogging (which had some of the elder patrons asking their companions for elucidation) and a brilliant Bulgarian song cycle (which any explanation would ruin), to a closing evangelical style song about Tesco there were more laughs than anyone could reasonably hope for.

Sadly there are only a few dates left in this current tour, so if you’re unfortunate enough to find yourself in Bolton (4th Nov), Crawley (5th Nov), Doncaster (6th Nov), or Taunton (7th Nov) you can buck yourself up immensely by catching them. But if you’re lucky enough to be in New York over the Christmas period you can see an apparently slightly toned down version when they do a three week run in the Brits Off Broadway season at the 59E59 Theaters.

[Note to Andrew: Can you invoice the girls for £83.60 as agreed then delete this note before publishing the article for me. Thanks. P.]

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?

But I’m turning into you and digressing. Nicholas Wright’s play is about the renowned Austrian born Freudian psychoanalyst Melanie Klein who was influential in innovating techniques in contemporary psychoanalysis and child psychology. Unfortunately for her family, she brings her work home.

Klein (Clare Higgins) is trying to come to terms with the recent death of her son as she prepares her new book aided by an assistant Paula (Nicola Walker) and is confronted by her daughter, also a well-known psychoanalyst, Melitta (Zoe Waites). All three players are excellent, Higgins wonderfully overbearing and Walker, an actress unfamiliar to me, portrays subtle manipulation quite superbly.

To say relations between mother and daughter are strained is an understatement. You’d be less likely to see these two getting on than Tony Blair shopping in Tesco.

Higgins’ Klein even occasionally reminded me Patricia Routledge’s Victoria Wood As Seen on TV character Kitty. Praise really doesn’t get much higher than that does it?

I saw the original 1988 National Theatre production with Gillian Barge in the title role, Zoe Wannamaker and Francesca Annis and loved it then, and was prepared for it to be a little too talky, which it is, but I found a lot of it hilarious. Unfortunately the rest of the audience didn’t seem to find it quite as funny as me. They must have wondered who the mad man was in a cheap seat at the back, peering between two pillars and cackling with laughter at some of the dreadful revelations and psycho-babble. A suitable case for treatment probably. I’m convinced it was meant to be funny.

You’d have been nicely assured that even in 1934 people who are preparing to go away mutter, “Ticket, passport, money, glasses”, though of course you would add hat boxes. And I was thrilled with Mrs Klein’s filing cabinet with a special drawer reserved for the ego. It’s definitely solved the quandary I had over the Whingers’ Christmas presents to ourselves.

The satisfyingly realistic set (Tim Hatley) was not dissimilar to the one in Duet for One, in fact my companion, Stephen, whispered “déjà vu” to me as the curtain rose. Yes, a curtain at the Almeida! And I’m sure its blood-red colour was foetally symbolic.

And unlike my last theatre visit without you, this was a thoroughly polished piece and nobody fell off the stage. Sadly, there were no Freudian slips.

Anyway despite the odd longueur I was thoroughly entertained by Thea Sharrock’s absorbing production, and I’m expecting you to send me off to any similarly themed productions in future should there happen to be revivals of Hysteria, Blue/Orange, Marat/Sade or the like.

But don’t expect any more letters, it may be a while before I go postal again.

Best

Phil

Footnote:

Psychology is a complex subject, but that’s just a very convoluted link to show you this clip of what happens when someone’s relationship is worse than Mrs K and her daughters…

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:

Feeling strangely inspired by his result (and the Whingers’ recent visit to Petra) Phil next set about carving the cheesy Old Vic out of a block of mature cheddar, having signally failed with an attempt to immortalise the iconic theatre using baked beans as a tribute to its current production.

Bread, cheese, ham? Expect to see a new theatrically named sandwich appearing in West End branches of Prêt A Manger any day now.

And once Phil got to thinking about the Old Vic’s auditorium when in its CQS space phase there was no stopping him as the results below can testify.

Thrilled having finally found a purpose in life, Phil has announced a raft of future theatre/food projects which will include the Red Leicester Square Theatre, Savoy Cabbage Theatre, London Pearladium, Duchess Potato Theatre, Lycheeum Theatre, Fortune Cookie Theatre, Duke of Pork’s, King Edward Theatre, Quince of Wales, Piccalilli Theatre and of course the Victoria Sponge Palace.

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.

Like Miniaturists, the annual Terror event could have been devised with the Whingers in mind: people  with short attention spans and low boredom thresholds can hold their heads up high here. In two hours and 20 minutes you get four short plays by Lucy Kirkwood,  Mark Ravenhill (who also performs his), Anthony Neilson and Neil LaBute plus some amusing bits of business before and between them including a masterful reminder to switch off your mobile phones and a delightful entr’acte by Sarah-Louise Young (this Sarah-Louise Young not this Sarah-Louise Young, we presume) . In a change to normal theatre bar practice Phil was actually served at the bar by one of the directors and we sincerely hope this conviviality spreads to the West End and subsidised theatres very soon.

The Whingers had deliberately avoided reading anything about Terror 2009 so as to derive the maximum shock factor and they weren’t disappointed so we won’t give away too much . We’ll just say that Kirkwood’s is perhaps the most traditional genre piece (and elicited a genuine scream from an audience member for its trouble) and is absolutely brilliantly staged. Ravenhill’s is the most linguistic and he makes a good fist of presenting it too. Neilson’s is the least horrific but the most real-play-like and features a wonderfully brash performance by Trudi Jackson. All three pieces are delivered in a spirit of playfulness which ends – very abruptly – with Mister LaBute’s Some White Chick which propels the audience full pelt into a brick wall of realism, rebuking them sharply for having enjoyed the foregoing Grand Guignol titillations.

Was that fair? Was that right? The Whingers had a good old debate about it in the (very reasonably priced) bar afterwards. After a few drinks, their initial deflation at  Mister LaBute having rather spitefully punctured their evening gave way to grudging acceptance and eventually they decided to bury the hatchet and deem the entire evening a great success.

Highly recommended but hurry because it closes on Saturday (24th October) for some strange reason, long before hallowe’en. We hear Southwark Playhouse is planning a panto next June.

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. Yes, writer Lucy Prebble has skilfully come up with a play which makes creative accountancy seem quite interesting and yes director Ruper Goold has assembled all those things he uses to try and make sitting through a play less of an ordeal: stylish set (Anthony Ward) and lighting (Mark Henderson), lots of scenes, video projections and a just a tad too much singing and dancing. There was also some baton twirling and an amusing depiction of Arnold Schwarzenegger. And it was all very accessible and enjoyable and neither Whinger fell asleep nor left in the interval. But even so…

Andrew was reminded a bit of the modern television documentary (think how dumbed down Dispatches has become) which feels the need to entertain with a bit of dramatisation to sugar the pill of factual programming. And similarly in Enron metaphors come thick and fast and either feel slightly overdone (the three blind mice at the opening) or outstay their welcome (the raptors representing the bogus companies set up to disguise Enron’s losses). Sometimes the Whingers felt they were being hit over the head a bit too much and for once we mean that metaphorically.

In one exchange between Amanda Drew playing a fictitious character Claudia Roe (would such a rich power-dressing woman have had a hole in her stockings?) and Jeffrey Skilling (Sam West), Enron’s top executive, discuss whether one of their sexual congresses was technically intercourse or not. It didn’t really need underlining with a clip of Bill Clinton’s iconic “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” speech. We got it Rupes. OK? And, incidentally, there should be some kind of warning for people in the front row if actresses are going to go round with no knickers on. And Andrew’s never going to touch a Kleenex again as long as he lives. But we digress.

The play has a fast moving, brisk playful feel and it does explain what could be dry shenanigans in ways that even financial dunces like the Whingers could understand (Phil has never really got over the Co-Op dropping its divvy). And the madness and frenzy of Goold’s shamelessly flashy production seems oddly appropriate to the absurdity of the story. In the scene in which financial whizzkid Andy Fastow (Tom Goodman-Hill) excitedly explains how he’s going to wrap up the company’s debts in a series of shadow companies Andrew had a flashback to The Producers and found himself muttering “you could make more money with a flop than with a hit”.

Despite good performances it’s obviously hard to have sympathy for any of the characters, though West’s Skilling is such an engaging, driven and committed character that you do almost feel something for him when he ends up with a lengthy prison sentence. Prebble manages to get some real conviction into his “I was only doing capitalism” speech.

Apparently Columbia Pictures have already bought the rights and the Sunday Times this week drew attention to the fact that Enron will be charging up to £74 for a seat when it transfers to the Noel Coward Theatre. How wonderfully ironic. Will audiences need to set up spurious companies to pay for their seats? Perhaps, it’s just part of some creative accounting so the production appears to be running in profit, when actually it’s covering up losses. Who would be an angel for Enron?

‘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.

Well, that’s a bit of a cheat really since Sean Holmes‘ production has a clock on stage which alarmingly shows real time – a risky move with a long three act play (or, even apparently one half that length in the case of Alistair McGowan’s Timing), but it at least meant Andrew wouldn’t be constantly tugging on Phil’s wrist.

Griffiths’ 1975 play, which is a bit of as timepiece itself, has a pleasingly straightforward construction: Act 1 has 6 aspiring working-class comedians trying to learn their craft under the tutorship of Eddie Waters (Matthew Kelly) in a Manchester evening class. Act 2 shows them performing their acts and Act 3 receiving a critique and (for some of them) earning contracts from an agent (Lily’s dad Keith Allen).

According the programme, Comedians has been translated into 20 languages and produced worldwide, facts which the Whingers found quite astonishing. Not becuase it’s not good, but because you would think that if you aren’t familiar with the Northern Comedy Club circuit or 70’s TV shows like Comedians or The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club, you might – like WebCowGirl who was also there the same night – find youself at a bit of a loss. You might find it dated and simply find the jokes racist and offensive (as they are intended to be). Or you might, like both Whingers, be absolutely gripped, challenged, provoked into thinking and reflecting and have a terrific time.

This is Sean Holmes’ first production as director since taking over as Artistic Director at the Lyric Hammersmwith and this is an impressively polished and assured debut as far as we are concerned (apparently he had a practice run a few years ago with a pre-Dr Who David David Tennant!). He has assembled a sterling and somewhat eclectic cast (there’s even a League of Gentlemen alumnus in the form of Reece Shearsmith). It would be unfair to single out any particular performances.

But when has that ever stopped us? So, firstly, we were very pleased finally to get to see Matthew Kelly on stage. He used to be a genial TV host in Stars In Their Eyes and before that – as Winnie puts it – was on that programme where he came down steps laughing.  Then suddenly he was a top class West End actor fêted for his Oliver-winning Lennie in Of Mice And Men, Victory at the Arcola and George in the recent Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. For some reason the Whingers managed to miss all of these so it was nice to see someone we regard as a bit of a hero on the quiet and he didn’t disappoint us.

Andrew was also very impressed with Mark Benton who plays Ged Murray, one half of the sibling double act that’s doomed to failure.

Comedians was the play that made a star out of Jonathan Pryce and if there’s any justice it should do the same for Twiggy’s son* David Dawson who plays Gethin Price, the would-be comic with a radically different approach to comedy. He already stood out in Act 1 but when he performs his bizarre, surreal, mime/”comedy” in Act 2 he’s mesmerising, even more incredible really as what he’s doing could have misfired horribly and been very embarrassing to watch.

Strangely, we know some people who couldn’t stomach this and were aching for it to end. But for the Whingers’ money this is one classy production with some outstanding performances. And if we can sit and watch a production without any women in it (let alone a Dame) and a clock ticking on stage for nigh on three hours then, let’s face it, it really must have something to it.

Footnotes

* For reasons that are lost in the mists of time, David Dawson is always referred to by the Whingers as “Twiggy’s son”. He isn’t, as far as we know. We just call him that. Hope that clears up any misunderstanding. Thank you.

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.

What did you miss? Well, a very convincingly dilapidated flat, full of stuffed birds – excellently realised by Mark Thompson and atmospherically lit by Rick Fisher – above a former fur factory in London’s East End.

30-year-old Cougar (Alec Newman) is – just like our good selves – celebrating his 19th birthday yet again with cake and copious amounts of alcohol, desperately trying to hang on to his youth or, in his case, any youth he can get his hands on. He conspires with his infatuated sugar-daddy Captain Tock (Finbar Lynch) as he attempts to seduce one of his party guests; teenage schoolboy Foxtrot Darling (Neet Mohan).

It got off to a crackingly menacing start, with the narcissistic Cougar preparing for his do by sitting in front of a sun lamp in distractingly dazzling white underpants, (I’ve commissioned The Hampstead Wardrobe Department to take charge of your laundry Andrew) whilst arrogantly ignoring Tock.

It’s Gothic Mr Sloane territory with a dash of Dorian Gray and a nod to Daphne Du Maurier, but unfortunately, Ridley is no Orton and despite good performances from Lynch and Newman the black humour, with some deliciously scabrous lines, didn’t raise many laughs.

You’d probably have found themes of ageing, decay and cruelty resonant and quite disturbing, but there was an incident which would have lived much longer in your memory; an on stage fight in Act 1 ended up with the excellent Finbar Lynch doing a Dietrich and falling off the the stage.

This would never have happened if your favourite fight supremo Terry King had been in charge. But how gloriously in the spirit of “the show must go on” did he continue delivering his lines from under the front of the stage. He clambered back on but was led off by a stagehand. Then Alec Newman, who was lying on the stage, was escorted off followed by an announcement that the play was stopping. Remember I texted you and you replied “How thrilling”? How very regrettable you missed it.

A few minutes elapsed before the stagehand returned to announce that Lynch would continue. Cue applause. What a trouper! I hope he wasn’t badly hurt. It was the highlight of a slightly turgid afternoon. Every show should try it. The chorus of Annie Get Your Gun should definitely give it a whirl, at least it would give them somewhere to dance.

Your spirit must have entered my theatre companion as he nearly nodded off in Act 1 and we were both checking our timepieces but since time is a theme it seemed oddly befitting. Our watches seemed the slowest clocks in the universe, Mr Ridley had mind-bogglingly put the brakes on time. But he also rather deftly left us with an intriguing cliff-hanger at the interval or we would definitely have walked. How cunning is that?

The second act was much better. Jaime Winstone (Ray’s daughter) as Foxtrot’s uninvited girlfriend Sherbert Gravel makes an impressive stage debut taking charge of the bizarre party, stacking around in Sam Cam heels and providing some much needed laughs even if her unmodulated, irritating voice made me long to hear fingernails dragged down a blackboard.

There’s also a huge stack of porn magazines produced in the play.  I would have covered your eyes as I know you’re of a sensitive disposition. I noted one was called “Big Butts”; I had several big buts about the play myself.

It all of course came to violent ending and some rather nasty descriptions of what went on in the furriers downstairs which you wouldn’t have liked either. Edward Dick’s production is perfectly fine but he should definitely keep in Finbar Lynch’s acrobatic display. We’re unlikely to witness its like again.

Gotta go, off to write our Olivier acceptance speech.

Best

Phil

The Fastest Clock in the Universe runs until Oct 17th.

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.

Notes found in the gutter of The Cut after the Monday 5th October preview of Annie Get Your Gun:

List Of The Final Few Rough Edges To Be Smoothed Off Before Opening Night on the 16th October
(If found, please return to radical opera director Richard Jones immediately)

1. Check with the theatre: will there be people sitting throughout the auditorium?If so will have to re-think the set as people sitting on the left won’t be able to see into the bedroom.
2. Also, the screen door may obscure the views for people sitting at the front of the stalls.
3. Also, people towards the back of the stalls won’t be able to see anything if there are people sitting in the row in front of them. Must remember to introduce seating rake or strip out every other row of seating.
4. Remember to ask Ultz to have another think about his “recessed letter-box Portakabin* in Cinemascope” set design. Making it very difficult to have people do anything other than move to the left or to the right. (Thank goodness there’s no choreography in my radical reinvention of the classic musical! Would be impossible. lol!) Must think more like Sir Trev, more Old Vic: deepen stage so cast don’t have to line dance though. Far too much like window ledge.  Cast keep threatening to jump. Can’t think why.
5. Oh, must organise getting some proper programmes printed instead of photocopied sheets.
6. Thought I heard riots outside before we went up tonight. Apparently there are no numbers printed on the tickets or on the seats. Seems a bit unprofessional. Must have a word with the theatre about it as the audience were looking very grumpy before we even started.
7. Before press night, I MUST MUST MUST decide which period it’s set in. I WILL decide. Difficult though. I like the fifties diner Fablon set on the right hand side of the stage but I also like our Churchill, Chairman Mao and Hitler gags. Obviously it’s really set in the 1880s but then again the show was written in 1946. Hmmm. Might not have time to sort this all out before press night (16th Oct). May just have to say it’s “timeless” or something.
8. Overheard someone complaining about the use of four upright saloon pianos instead of an orchestra! Ridiculous! The musical is never going to get a radical overhaul if people cling to silly, old-fashioned ideas about orchestras and orchestrations.
9. And besides, the tinkling saloon bar pianos set the scene perfectly during the overture. Them and the wagon wheel chandeliers really put the audeince in mind of  the old Wild West until the curtain goes up and… well, you’re in a fifties diner. Yes, must remember to say it’s “timeless”.
10. May have to turn down the Going For A Song bird noises piped over the action for the first hour. People can’t hear the dialogue apparently. They are SUCH reactionaries. Honestly. Get with the times people.
11. Hmmm. Anyway, people still can’t hear the dialogue when the tweeting stops. Wonder if this set and its ceiling are causing havoc with the acoustics. Must have another word with Ultz.
12. Is it too late to think about someone else for the role of Annie Oakley? Heard someone say Jane Horrocks is horribly shrill and poorly enunciated. Something about “gurning” and “Little wonder she made her name playing Little Voice” and “Is that her making that noise or is it Ethel Merman spinning in her grave?”
13. Think most of JH’s songs may be in the wrong key. Does she have a right key? Must sort that out before we open.
14. Think happy thoughts! Oh, I laugh every time we use that conveyor belt with trees and stuff on it to denote the movement of the train. I think we should make the loading and unloading of it more laboured as sometimes I’m getting distracted by the scene being played in front of it.
15. Someone described the staging of “I Got the Sun in the Morning” as “shambolic”. Well, what do they expect when the whole cast is crammed into a recessed letter-box Portakabin* in Cinemascope with no headroom. I’d like to see them try it!
16. Heard someone complaining we cut “An Old Fashioned Wedding”. I know it’s a great old-fashioned (if you care for that sort of thing) musical comedy number but, really, how would you use the conveyor belt? People just don’t think about these things.
17. Still, “Anything You Can Do” went down very well with the audience and that didn’t have a conveyor belt. Maybe I should cut it before the opening night just to be on the safe side.

On the plus side:

1. Glad we decided to give the ensemble some nice harmonies to sing.
2. Must remember to congratulate Julian Ovenden for his musical star quality. Although I heard someone saying he is the lone repository of the spirit of musical theatre in the entire production so perhaps he’s not really radical enough for my vision. Perhaps I should sack him. “My Defenses Are Down” applauded very enthusiastically.
3. Think the live chicken went down well with the audience. (Glad I snapped her up after seeing her in Jerusalem. Ultz spoke very highly of her).

Footnotes

* Note from lawyers:”Portakabin” is a registered trade mark of Portakabin Limited for a modular office building system not a generic term for a temporary on-site building.

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?

And, well, to be honest at 105 minutes it was much longer than we had expected this one act-er to be (Andrew had 80 minutes in his head as the result of an Internet search). But the Whingers were well compensated by the knowledge that as they sat down for a post-play snifter, the poor saps at the National Theatre were just crawling towards their interval, their spirits broken and probably sobbing too.

Instead, the Whingers got to watch one of their few contemporary male theatrical heroes Mark Rylance (still sporting his Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron moustache) sitting in what looks to be a very uncomfortable position indeed and occasionally sounding a bit like John Cleese.

Given that Beckett is pretty obscure there are some tricky lines to get through and in a less successful production lines such as “Have you not had enough?” might have elicited some waggish Too Close To The Sun type comments from the audience. But the Whingers found it surprisingly watchable, although their minds wandered at times onto the chair-bound Rylance’s freely swinging legs which became a matter of great debate over the post show snifter. Were they fake? Are his legs tucked up under him inside the chair for the 105 minutes? The Whingers decided they were. How does he do it? What if he gets cramp? The Whingers are even more in awe of Rylance now.

In case you are hazy about which Beckett play is which, Endgame (or Waiting For Richard Briars To Come On, as it’s now called) is the one with two people poking up out of dustbins. Happily, one of those two people is Miriam Margolyes who isn’t on (up?) for very long but is wonderful and is almost forgiven for being in Wicked! It also features Tom Hickey and the director, Complicite’s Simon McBurney.

And they are all excellent. Top notch performances, a lovely set from Tim Hatley (including a squeaky swing door – how do they make things squeaky in the theatre? Do they have to wait for them to get old? Or is there some kind of trick?) and some very atmospheric lighting from Paul Anderson. If you have to go to see a production of Endgame then this is probably about as good a one as you could possibly choose. Even in the soporific gloom, Andrew (who hasn’t slept will since arriving back from Jordan, his dreams now being permanently occupied by choking, rustling plastic bags) hardly nodded off at all. On the occasions that he did he was woken by the play’s alarm clock. That Samuel Beckett thought of everything.

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.

Andrew has not quite finished with Jordan yet, however. He will be twittering at Queen Rania of Jordan about the state of the nation which on Day One of the trip he declared to be something of a “hole”. He had been deeply dismayed not only by the rubbish which is strewn along the roadsides of Jordan but also the fields of endless, fluttering plastic bags wrapped around every stone and bush. Alarmingly there were even more bags in the countryside than Phil carried in his luggage which he rustled tirelessly (to Andrew’s intense irritation) on each unpacking and repacking as the Whingers travelled up and down the country. Phil still insists he was doing excerpts from Stomp.

Thankfully there were moments of relaxation. Phil found time to catch up on some of his favourite reading while floating in the Dead Sea. And yes, since you ask, Phil survived his night without a shower, and what he would class as a bathroom, in the desert at Wadi Rum.

Extraordinarily, given what Andrew terms his “advanced years”, Phil had never slept completely en plein air before. Andrew, of course, has much more experience having frequently enjoyed a night in the theatre dozing contentedly in the front row of the stalls with nothing between him and the stars.

Disappointingly, it turned out that there isn’t really a West End in Amman. There is a West Bank nearby but it’s not really the same thing as far as we could make out. The nearest thing to a celebrity the Whingers could find was the grandson of Lawrence of Arabia’s Bedouin friend and guide who was thrilled to be photographed with the Whingers:

But some things are constant wherever in the world the Whingers lay their (rather natty in this case) hats: disappointment. They opted for a “Petra By Night” option which involved a long candlelit walk through the Siq to Petra’s famous Treasury for something that was advertised as entertainment. It was unreserved seating of course, so things got off to a bad start as they were actually told where to rest their bottoms (mats on the floor) making them almost long for The Tricycle Theatre.

There ensued a seemingly interminable performance on a rather strange Bedouin instrument followed by a local on some sort of flute thingy. But it was the acting which followed which finished them off completely, a solo performance by a man declaiming about Peter and Arabic coffee. Could this be this Jordan’s Cottesloe? Needless to say the Whingers didn’t make it through to the end.

In their quest to find a proper theatre, the Whingers had to content themselves with a Roman theatre in the ruins of Jerash which was nevertheless much more comfortable and accessible than the New London Theatre.

And it seems Ben Hur Live! is following the Whingers round the world and that they really needn’t have trekked to the O2 after all: also in Jerash they found this show, complete with gladiators, chariot races and a permanent sand arena in the Hippodrome:

RACE

THE-ROMAN-AR
MY-AND-CHARI
OT-EXPERIENCE

But it all wasn’t fun and games. The country has never really taken to alcohol. A beer in a restaurant costs £4.50 and a bottle of the cheapest local wine (“Mount Nebo” where Moses died) costs upwards of £21.

Even the river after which the country is named is not what it was when John the Baptist dunked Jesus into it like some holy digestive. Indeed the trickle that is left is mostly sewage and effluent from fish farms. On learning that Andrew had never been baptised Phil became quite determined to immerse Andrew into the river’s holy waters just to be on the safe side and a disagreement ensued.

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.

Phil’s main concern is spending a night in a Bedouin tent with Andrew (أندرو) at Wadi Rum (وادي رم) which Phil – in a moment of uncharacteristic weakness – was bullied into agreeing to by Andrew.

But now he comes to think about the reality of it: a night in a sleeping bag, in a tent, in a desert, with a communal water closet and no shower? Small matters of hygiene are of little consequence to Andrew but Phil (فيليب), who famously wears his Howard Hughes tendencies with pride, is fretting about that one. Unwashed Whingers? It really doesn’t bear thinking about.

So look forward to daguerreotypes of them visiting sites of  Canaanite, Semitic and Edomite civilisations even more ancient than Andrew’s undergarments. Marvel as the West End Whingers (Whingers نهاية الغرب) mount their sturdy asses passing through the Siq to see Petra (البتراء), presumably named after the legendary Blue Peter dog. Gasp as Phil floats in the Dead Sea (البَحْر المَيّت) reading old theatre programmes and waiting to see if 33.7% salinity really is sufficient to keep Andrew’s salty old body from going under.

Jordan (الأردنّ) will no doubt be sandier than Ben Hur Live!, the Whingers may even find it too close to the sun.

Meanwhile, it’s not entirely a holiday for Andrew who is fairly confident of sorting out the Middle East crisis once and for all and has already begun networking with key figures as part of what he sadly considers to be a charm offensive. Mostly this involves following Jordan’s Queen Rania on Twitter.

Footnotes

* Phil claims to know who it is and will spill the beans for the Katie Price of a drink.

Since the unexpected but most welcome song dedicated* to them in the Menier’s Forbidden Broadway, the Whingers have become impossibly grand. They’ve set their sights even higher and expect to see themselves portrayed on stage ere long.

But who would play them? Cross-gender casting wouldn’t bother them at all and Phil would be more than happy to see the wonderful Fenella Fielding tackling his sophisticated airs.

But who could possibly do justice to Andrew? Who could best encapsulate his physical attributes? Miriam Margolyes? Bonnie Langford? Jeanette Krankie?

The reason for this speculation was a trip to the Soho Theatre to see Bette Bourne and Mark Ravenhill: A Life in Three Acts, a triptych of plays based on an interview Mark Ravenhill conducted with the legendary radical drag veteran Bette Bourne.

But the Whingers were particularly attracted to Friday’s performance because Ravenhill (who was taking part in his own civil ceremony that day) was unavailable and Fenella Fielding was filling in. On the previous night she had played the part of Ravenhill interviewing Bourne himself but tonight she was standing in as Bourne being interviewd by Bourne as Ravenhill. Got that? Still with us?

To complicate matters there are three interviews, this being the first section dealing with Bourne’s early years as a child but mainly focussing on his years living in a London commune and his part in early gay rights campaigns.

Perhaps surprisingly, Fielding acquitted herself brilliantly and was completely on top of her material which although mainly read from the script seemed well rehearsed (despite only one afternoon’s rehearsal), even prompting Bourne when he missed a cue.

It was, however, quite strange watching Fielding in her trademark pilgrim white collars** talking about her experiences on acid.

So it turned out to be something of a treat of an evening: funny, interesting, occasionally moving and all over within about an hour. The evening’s only low point was down to the stupid unallocated seating system: two seats in the front row were actually allocated through the medium of laminated “reserved” signs. Sadly, the hapless ushers needed to sit three people in the front row and efforts to persuade someone to volunteer to move from the front row were met with frosty glares until the gallant Saint Angela Of The Audience Club shamed everyone by volunteering to relocate. Still, when will theatres learn that unallocated seating is just a stupid, annoying deeply flawed system that audiences hate. one can only suppose that it suits the theatres in some way because it certainly isn’t for the benefit of their customers.

Afterwards (with Andrew dispatched home for some much needed beauty sleep) Phil had the chance to be introduced to Fielding giving him the chance to gush over her so much not even Red Adair could have put him out.

Footnotes

* Well, practically.

** Strangely, no mention of them in The Scotsman’s article: Fenella Fielding: My Life In Clothes

Just because we can:

A good, old fashioned courtroom drama, Kevin Spacey in a white wig, a couple of lines from Janine Duvitski, a cast of 41 and a performing rhesus monkey – what more could any sane theatregoer possibly ask for?

Well, the Whingers would obviously want a running time which left open the window of opportunity to a post-show drink or three, of course. But listen to this: even with Trevor Nunn at the helm Inherit the Wind is all over in about two and a half hours.  And, goodness, is it slickly done for the most part.

Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee’s 1955 play is based on the 1926 Scopes Monkey Trial in which Tennessee schoolteacher John Scopes was put on trial for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution in  contravention of a state law insisting that only religious explanations for the origin of mankind be taught.

Apparently it was written as a commentary on the McCarthy witch hunts of the time, the creationism vs. evolution debate obviously having been settled once and for all long before then. Oh, hang on. But really, anyone who has seen Phil struggling to get the childproof cap off a bottle of aspirin can tell you that the concept of “intelligent design” just doesn’t hold water.

So, yes, anyway, the second act is a good old fashioned courtroom scene in which Matthew Harrison Brady (David Troughton) and Henry Drummond (Spacey) battle it out for the prosecution and defence respectively.

Spacey is almost unrecognisable as the stooped and padded Drummond and for some reason put the Whingers in mind of Charles Laughton (in Witness For The Prosecution, not The Hunchback of Notre Dame).  Spacey has given Drummond a very distinctive walk which is a bit unfortunate as Mr Troughton has a genuine limp (judging by his appearance in The Old Vic bar after the show). This results in what appears to be a battle of silly walks between the two adversaries which distracted the Whingers from the legal arguments somewhat.

There’s also great support from Mark Dexter as the cynical liberal journalist E.K. Hornbeck (a character based on H.L. Mencken) and – thrillingly – Janine Duvitski waving a fan. We also liked the old style flash gun and the rhesus monkey (we aren’t sure if we saw Kate, Lily or Rosie) courtesy of Amazing Animals.

There is a very well conveyed sense of the oppressive heat in which the trial takes place and for those who like that sort of thing (and we do) there is an audaciously deep set by Rob Howell which seems to go back a mile.

The scale is all very impressive. It’s a bigger cast than The Shawshank Redemption! and looks bigger than Ben Hur Live! Apparently the play is written for “25 or more actors plus 20 extras” which, as Sir Trev says in the programme is a tall order “but the Vic has a community project and does outreach work” which presumably means not everyone is getting paid. The Whingers are thinking about getting involved as they could probably spare one evening per fortnight to wave a fan and look all excited about the Lord.

We do think Sir Trev has himself evolved since Gone With the Wind – The Musical! Despite being back in the deep south with more wind and marshalling an army of 41 actors (plus monkey) there are only occasional traces of flatulence – too much unnecessary singing and business that slows the play down slightly. Despite this the Whingers can report that Trev’s wind is definitely on the mend.

The play survives because it’s a good solid old fashioned play with some clever and witty debating even if the ending feels like a slight apology for the attacks on religion that have gone before.

Afterwards, we were idly wondering whatever happened to the courtroom drama. It’s a terrific genre, but like the thriller and the whodunnit, it seems sadly to have gone out of fashion. Whose fault is that?

Footnotes

• Lawrence & Lee also adapted Auntie Mame into the hit musical Mame. Lee is survived by his wife, voice actress Janet Waldo (the voice of many well-known cartoon characters, including Judy Jetson)
• Strangely, there is no mention of Gone With the Wind – The Musical! in Sir Trev’s bio in the programme. He must have forgotten to add it.
• Most excitingly: Andrew turned up at the Old Vic sporting a natty newly cropped coiffure and having shaved off his full set. Phil thinks it’s knocked years off him and now looks like he was born during our current soverign’s reign. Andrew, however, is concerned he doesn’t have any lips, which is odd given the amount of lip Phil’s given him over the years.

Harmony.

All’s right with the world again.

After disagreements over their last two sorties, Talent and Ben Hur Live, the Whinger’s schism has – for the moment – healed. Amelioration was achieved by a theatrical band-aid applied last night at the Lyric Hammersmith: the far from harmonious Punk Rock.

Who said school days are the happiest of your life? Presumably not playwright Simon Stephens. Yes, that’s him, the same writer who had the Whingers in such complete unison with his last effort Harper Regan that they left at the interval in synchronised steps.

But there was to be no scurrying off during the interval of Punk Rock. With the attention-challenged in mind Mr Stephens cunningly has his latest effort whistled through in a very Whinger-friendly 1 hour 50 minutes with no break.

A good start, but it wasn’t the only thing to have the Whingers nodding in approval.

Punk Rock takes place mostly in the very impressive Hogwarts style library (by Paul Wills) of a well heeled school in Stockport where a motley group of sixth formers dominated by posh bully Bennett (Henry Lloyd-Hughes) are about to take their mock A Levels. New girl Lily (Jessica Raine) arrives and catches the heart of charismatic misfit William (Tom Sturridge) but her rejection of him sets the group down a path that ends in violence.

The Whingers didn’t recognise anything from their own school days in this group of confident, articulate teenagers prone occasionally to giving quite long speeches outlining apocalyptic world views. Nobody talked eagerly about last night’s The Two Ronnies or how pointless PE was, but things have probably changed since our day so we set aside our reservations. The only thing we couldn’t quite allow was that everyone would put up with the deeply objectionable behaviour of the bullying Bennett. This credibility gap felt like a big hole in the centre of the play that the Whingers had to walk gingerly around if they were to swallow the story and this they generously did.

Belief also has to be suspended when one of the bright young things is awarded a grade C for her English exam. Don’t they all get 5 or 6 grade As now? Something to do with human rights.

But what really makes Punk Rock stand out is the quality of performances from the depressingly young cast. We very much liked Katie West (invisible on Google) as Tanya (both Whingers remember Tanyas at school) but it is Tom Sturridge (right, son of director Charles Sturridge actress Phoebe Nicholls) who steals the show with a performance of such awesome panache and nuance that it really shouldn’t be missed. Andrew met his auntie once.

It’s all very engrossing. The audience – who were largely even younger than the cast – proved again (think Carrie’s War) that adult audiences (think The Shawshank Redemption) can learn from their youngers and betters. So gripped were they that you could have heard a scrunchie drop.

If it weren’t for the misleading (and still utterly puzzling) title the Whingers could see Punk Rock transferring successfully to the West End.

“Very agreeable” mumbled Andrew as they left the auditorium for the bar. And so it was. The Whingers were once again agreeing. We’ll see how long it lasts.

Footnotes

• One of the (unseen) teachers is called “Eldridge”. Is this a writerly in-joke?
• Although we enjoyed it, we also completely understand where this dissenting review from the former Teenage Theatre Critic is coming from. Interestingly TTC stopped being a teenager very recently and seems to have vaulted straight into his whinging years. They grow up so fast these days, don’t they?

This was the Whingers’ first visit to the O2 Arena which has not had a good year: there’s been an awful lot of space to fill due to the death of Michael Jackson and there’s an awful lot of space to fill inside. Inserting “live” in the title of Ben Hur seems particularly perverse, not to mention the name-check for one of the singer’s most famous ditties. But we digress. We procrastinate. Because…

Oh dear, “artistically” things are rockier between the Whingers than they have been for quite some while. The minor schism that developed over Talent has now, thanks to Ben Hur Live at the O2 Arena, broadened into a rift so wide you could drive a quadriga through it.

So, no co-operation, no collaboration, no unified voice. We have to go our own separate ways…

“Course you can, Malcolm”, Kiku, Mike & Bernie Winters, Norman Vaughan, Lena Zavaroni, Stars on Sunday, Hughie Green, Wagon Wheels. Goodness knows what anyone under a certain age or not of these isles will make of Victoria Wood’s Talent at the Menier Chocolate Factory.

The Whingers (who sadly are of a certain age, possibly a bit older) had popped along to last night’s first preview on the off-chance that they might receive another name check.

Instead, they found themselves thrown back in time to a backstage Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club drama.

Talent is a very strange concoction: a play with music. Well, it’s not much of a play really, more like a few vignettes strung together around a talent competition in Bunter’s Piccadilly nightclub in Manchester.

Phil found it rather dull. Andrew didn’t. Yes, strange indeed. One of the many things of which the Whingers are frequently accused is being in accord on practically everything they see so you would hardly expect Victoria Wood (whom both love and quote ad nauseam) to create a something resembling a critical fissure.

But it does feature what everyone was there for: Wood’s campy, droll, quotable, northern aphorisms: “She lives on Consulates and smoky bacon crisps” and (of a failed nun) “They were always having tomato soup and she lost her faith”.

The strong cast includes Hi De Hi’s Jeffrey Holland (very good), Blue Peter’s Mark Curry, the ever-dependable Mark Hadfield and a particularly charming turn from Suzie Toase (Little Red Riding Hood in the ROH’s Into The Woods).

Now Phil does agree that the cast were mainly very good; his problem was with the piece and the direction (Wood herself) which after a promisingly playful, kitsch start takes a huge dip when it reaches the club’s backstage area and we’re left mainly with talent contest hopeful Julie (Leanne Rowe) and Maureen (Toase) with other characters occasionally dropping in to liven things up. The lines are there but frequently fall flat in what is really a sluggishly extended sketch. It was no doubt hilarious when Wood and (Julie) Walters performed it and many of the audience (male couples of a certain age) were still guffawing. But not Phil.

It all seemed a bit dated with the songs adding very little apart from bringing the whole thing to a grinding halt, culminating in a anthemic finale which was such a strange sub Sondheim little number that Phil assumed it must be a parody.

Designer Roger Glossop has terrific fun with the 70’s costumes (especially the blue and yellow outfits for crooning trio Triple Velvet and Leanne Rowe’s wonderful psychedelic flared catsuit).

At 95 minutes with no interval it flies by (or forces you to make frequent glances at your wrist, depending on which Whinger you trust) and there’s plenty of time left to hang around the Menier bar (the Whingers are in agreement here) and marvel at how well Victoria Wood looks, how almost unrecognisable Frances Barber (or her lookalike) appears and how Bobby Crush has grown.

“Dreams are what the future is made of… Hope will take you there.”

Did someone really mean that? And what did they really mean? We can’t imagine. It’s writ large in bright lights along the marquee of the Wyndham’s Theatre where The Shawshank Redemption is playing. The Whingers spent much of the interval mulling it over last night but frankly they were none the wiser once their mulling was done.

Shawshank was, of course,  a rather agreeable film based on a novella by Stephen King. Then some people in Ireland decided to make it into a play which was put on at Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre where – according to the hype surrounding the London transfer – it earned rave reviews. We could only find one review: it’s in the Irish Times written by Peter Crawley who seemed to like it well enough but he can hardly be described as raving.

But people are turning up in their droves regardless: there was hardly a spare seat in the stalls last night. It wasn’t available on TKTS and we’ve heard no rumours of the house being papered so we must assume these were mostly genuine punters attracted by the cachet of the film.

Many of them seemed to be American (a couple of them ovated at the end). Others had clearly been shipped in from the Theatre Royal Drury Lane where they are currently appearing in the audience of Oliver!. A woman behind Phil who was presumably familiar with the film was explaining to her companion what was about to happen next. Another had brought in a Starbucks iced drink and was slurping contentedly between rattling the ice throughout the first act. He or she must have popped out for another one during the interval judging by the continued baby’s rattle noises during the second act which ironically opened in the prison library with the instruction”Silence” chalked on the blackboard. But perhaps this audience hadn’t learnt to read yet.

A woman in front of Phil waited until the quietest moments to wriggle in her creaking seat making the Whingers faintly nostalgic for the Old Vic. The woman four seats away from Andrew must have had the world’s largest boiled sweet judging by the amount of time it took her to remove the wrapping. We’re not even going to mention the number and variety of mobile phone ringtones that punctuated the play.

There’s a suggested age limit of 15 due to nudity and bad language,  but clearly nothing to suggest what their mental age should be.  Actually that’s unfair, children (after the Whinger’s experience at Carrie’s War) know how to behave better than this motley mob.

Oh dear, there we go again, reviewing the audience instead of the play.

Right. In this version Kevin Anderson (who played Joe Gillis opposite Patti LuPone in Sunset Boulevard in London) plays Andy Dufresne and Reg E. Cathey (who’s in The Wire) plays Red. Both are locked up in Shawshank prison which smells of shit, piss, blood and fear (we are only told this, by the way). Dufresne is banged up for a murder he did not commit, Red for one he did. We think. The Whingers’ attentions were wandering from quite early on to be honest. Anyway, one escapes and the other gets parole and dreams are what the future is made of and hope takes them there.

Strangely, there is little sense of the passing of time in the play. It all seems to take perhaps a year or eighteen months whereas about 20 years is supposed to have elapsed and in the film this is rather cleverly shown by the changing icons on Dufresne’s wall – Rita Hayworth, Marylin Monroe and Raquel Welch.

Still, the Whingers did feel that 20 years had quite possibly passed despite the fairly modest running time of 2 hours 10 minutes. 20 years in 140 minutes ought to feel very rushed but Shawshank is a strangely plodding experience, curiously flat and seems to contain very little in the way of anything much happening despite the fact that there’s a rape scene, a hanging, a lot of hitting people on the back of the thighs with cardboard batons and a couple of rather effective fight scenes which for once are not choreographed by Terry King (who would win in a stage fight, do you think? Terry King or Karl Magee?).

Mostly Shawshank just made the Whingers want to see the film again. Putting it on stage added nothing (other than a set that made them yearn for “Cell Block Tango”) and took away quite a lot. Still it will presumably do very well judging by the enthusiastic reception last night.

But back to “Dreams are what the future is made of… Hope will take you there.” What was it all about?

In the Irish Times, Mr Crawley said he saw in the play a Christ parable. The Whingers didn’t really get that. And who or what was redeemed? Try as we might all we could think about was Green Shield Stamps. Director Peter Sheridan says in the programme notes that it’s the story of two men who redeem one another. “Andy saves Red but has to look at the wreckage of his own past and confront it. Red saves Andy but not before he realises that he must allow hope into his head and into hs heart. They are bound up together and, without that friendship, there is no redemption.” Well, we obviously weren’t concentrating because we missed all of that. Phil quite liked the lighting.

One definition of redemption is ” the act of purchasing back something previously sold” but sadly the Wyndham’s box office wasn’t having any of it when we made polite enquiries on the way out.

Footnotes

Cafe Koha is the ideal place for a pre- and post-theatre drink as the outside seating affords an unrivalled viewpoint from which you can observe the various comings and goings from the Wyndham’s and Coward stage doors including actors popping out for a fag. It was lovely to see Calendar Girl Jerry Hall hanging out with some of the Shawshankers. We love Jerry.

Yes, another trip to the fringe. We promise to break out of it soon.

Latest news on the poor, beleaguered Finborough Theatre: not only is there still no alcohol licence but there’s not even a bar any more. Drinks may be purchased at the nearby newsagent  and brought in to the auditorium in plastic cups. There is still no running water in the gents. The auditorium remains tropically warm.

So it’s saying something that despite all this the Whingers had a thoroughly enjoyable evening when they visited last night to catch The Druid’s Rest by the “Welsh Noel Coward” Emlyn Williams.

And bits of it are in Welsh!

Now Phil came over a bit Anne Robinson about this, not (as Andrew will attest) by suddenly looking years younger, but by struggling to suppress a long held resentment from his west country childhood when he could never understand why most of his English teachers were Welsh people who never ceased extolling the virtues of Wales. If it’s so good what are you doing in Wiltshire?

Anyway, Emlyn Williams is best known for Night Must Fall* and The Corn Is Green and The Druid’s Rest is principally notable for being the play in which Richard Burton made his stage debut in 1944. It’s a light comedy set in the small Welsh village of Ton-y-maes where the locals are in a state of excitement over the relocation to their area of the Eisteddfod (one of Andrew’s favourite words, incidentally, but one that casts a chill in Phil’s heart). A murderer is on the run from London and a mysteriously evasive stranger turns up at the inn…

Phil was very taken by the performance of an absurdly youthful looking (but not in an Anne Robinson way) Joshua McCord as Tommos the younger son, Rachel Isaac’s chirpy Ruth-Madoc-on-speed performance as Sarah Jane Jehovah, and especially Bennet Thorpe’s excellent comedic turn as A Mysterious Wayfarer. Anna Lindup’s convincingly cockernee Kate (the cunning device by which the Welsh people are forced to speak English) was more excited about a sewing machine than the Eisteddfod which was a sentiment Phil could fully understand.

The Whingers were also very impressed with the cast members’ ability to stand (and even change costumes) behind the Welsh dresser (the exit behind it went no further) and they applauded the decisions to put all the seats in front of the action instead of along the sides (c.f. State Fair).

Phil might have even have forgiven the excessive Welshness of it all if it hadn’t been for the cast’s curtain call as a Welsh (almost all) male voice choir at the end. For Phil, only a skirl of bagpipes or newspaper on polystyrene produces a more painful sound.

But – Welshness aside – this is an amusing little play and charmingly delivered (although the elderly woman sitting next to Andrew said she was enjoying it in spite of the cast’s insistence on playing as if to a 20,000 seat auditorium).

After the show the Whingers decamped to the nearby Pembroke (continuing the Welsh theme) where they were thrilled to find themselves sharing a table with Eileen, the mother of the show’s director David Cottis. Despite pumping Eileen for embarrassing stories of Mr Cottis’s childhood the only thing she volunteered was that he had a very pattable head.

The Druid’s Rest plays at the Finborough on Sundays and Mondays: 13, 14, 20 and 21 September 2009.

Footnotes

* Filmed in 1937 with Robert Montgomery, Rosalind Russell and Dame May Whitty with the tag line “AMAZING! DIFFERENT! UNIQUE!”

Why?

Anyone with little more than a CSE (explanatory note to the youth of today: that’s what you would know as an A Grade A Level) knowledge of the West End Whingers’ predilections and prejudices will know that the duo take a very dim view indeed of playwright  Caryl Churchill.

This stance is based almost entirely on having endured Drunk Enough To Say I Love You…? at the Royal Court three years ago.

So why would the Whingers elect to visit Fandango’s production of Cloud Nine at the Union Theatre? Why?

Well, firstly, of course, the Whingers are always seeking to better themselves and what does not kill them can only make them stronger (although each reports having felt much weaker on emerging from their Caryl Churchill experiences).

But more interestingly, the director Jamie Honeybourne shares his surname with the village next to the one in which Andrew’s paternal grandparents lived and which also boasts one of England’s top maximum security prisons: Long Lartin.

Long Lartin offers prisoners “a range of vocational training opportunities including a woodcraft training area, bricklaying, barbering, industrial cleaning, laundry and painting and decorating. … A popular gymnasium, which has been extended, offers a range of recreational facilities as well as accredited courses” and it was of this idyllic life that the Whingers dreamed as they sat entombed in the Union Theatre last night.

Even the furniture was against us. Phil famously has an almost pathological aversion to on-stage park benches and this production of Cloud Nine features not one but two. How the budget stretched to it is beyond belief and sadly the play never really stood a chance.

Here’s the gist in a nutshell via Wikipedia:

Act 1 is set in British colonial Africa in Victorian times, and Act 2 is set in a London park in 1979. However, between the acts only twenty-five years pass for the characters. Each actor plays one role in Act 1 and a different role in Act 2 – the characters who appear in both acts are played by different actors in the first and second. Act 1 parodies the conventional comedy genre and satirizes Victorian society and colonialism. Act 2 shows what could happen when the restrictions of both the genre of comedy and Victorian ideology are loosened in the more permissive 1970s.

The play uses controversial portrayals of sexuality and obscene language and establishes a parallel between colonial and sexual oppression. Its humour depends on incongruity and the carnivalesque, and helps to convey Churchill’s political message about accepting people who are different and not dominating them or forcing them into particular social roles.

We can only report that parody of the conventional comedy genre and satirization of Victorian society outstays its welcome very rapidly indeed and had the Whingers longing for genuine comedy genre and authentic Victorian society.

Putting the play to one side for the moment, the evening was not without its charms. Alan Gibbons (invisible on Google) creates an enjoyably playful and amusing Betty in the colonial first act (it comes as no surprise that his credits list him as a stand-up and Pantomime Dame). And Phil found Andrew Obeney’s  Clive helped liven up the proceedings though when the actor plays Cathy, a young girl, in next act he’s saddled with a costume reminding Phil of one of David Walliams’ more extreme characters.

But excitingly as ersatz Simon Cowells and Amanda Holdens the Whingers did again get to witness a new (to them) talent which is bad news for Jennifer Bryden (right) as a blessing from the Whingers usually proves to be the kiss of death to an otherwise promising career. Both Whingers came out of the Union simultaneously babbling about her performance – not as the irritating child Edward in the first act (although she’s fine there) – but as the second act Betty. Her portrayal of the Thatcheresque mother (complete with Thatcher pussy-bow) adjusting to her new life as a divorcee was superb,  producing the only truly mesmerising and moving moments in the play.

But mostly the Whingers just sat yearning for a bit of wit. Ms Churchill is proof that satire need not be biting. There was the occasional joke although these seemed almost by accident rather than design and were probably mainly due to the delivery of the performers. Most of Cloud Nine is duller than a Long Lartin cafeteria knife and if it has more of a point it was lost on the Whingers.

Footnote

The programme mentions thanks to Deborah Kerr which intrigued the Whingers. Did the director study her performance in The King and I to get a feel of starchy Victorian manners? Or was she perhaps related to Gavin Kerr who plays Joshua and Gerry? Had we hung around in the bar afterwards we might have found out but we didn’t. That’s how weak we were feeling.

With their own diaries groaning and a deluge of theatrical openings looming the Whingers found the only way they could possibly fit everything promising in was to trek off to the Richmond Theatre to catch the appropriately monikered Simon Bent’s stage adaptation of John Lahr’s biography and Joe Orton’s diaries, Prick Up Your Ears.

Chronicling playwright Orton’s rise to fame and his volatile relationship with Kenneth Halliwell Phil found distressing parallels not only with the Gallagher brothers but with the Whingers whose own meteoric ascent (albeit to nowhere and even then only in their heads) and similarly symbiotic alliance suggested some worrying parallels. Let’s just say Phil came out of the theatre and headed straight to Franchi’s to get a lock for his tool box and leave it at that, shall we?

The theatrical delights extended beyond the proscenium arch at the Saturday matinée and the Whingers were rolling in the aisles before a word had even been uttered on stage. The auditorium had darkened, the curtain had gone up, Kenneth Halliwell (Matt Lucas) was sitting on a bed on stage and an elderly man wandered to the front of the stalls and tried to locate his seat in row B.

Now either the latecomer didn’t realise the play had started or he simply didn’t care because his less than sotto voce utterances (“Where’s B 13?”, “It’s dark, I can’t see.”) forced Lucas to extemporise for several minutes, garnering rounds of applause from the audience.

The Whingers were so impressed they considered coming in late from the interval if that was all they needed to do to get an audience roaring with laughter. It is almost certainly the only way they will ever generate such enthusiastic applause. But sadly they would have been upstaged by Mr B 13 who remained standing talking to people in the row behind him as  the curtain went up on act 2. Eventually he seated himself and proceeded to open (noisily, naturally) his packet of crisps, tucking into them until a woman in row A shushed him.

It would all have been most entertaining but in fact the Richmond audience was full of annoying, chatty, senior people who seemed to be incapable of not commenting on the action. You would think that the over-privileged denizens of Richmond would have been better brought up better, wouldn’t you? But you would be wrong. It was almost as bad as Oliver! It just goes to show that you can’t buy manners (a fact to which the alumni of Phil’s finish school bear testimony).

Anyway, that’s enough time spent reviewing of the audience.

The play is fine, very watchable (Bent also adapted one of the Whingers’ favourite outings from last year: Elling) and comes in at a pleasingly economical 2 hours 10 minutes. Little Britain’s  Matt Lucas does himself credit as Halliwell although he is more charismatic and sympathetic than anyone having read the biographies and diaries might expect. Counterintuitively he is more effective when portraying Halliwell’s darker side than his comedic moments.

Chris New (he of Bent) is a highly convincing Orton and definitely looks the part although when he dons a suit and smooths his hair forward to go and collect his Evening Standard award he reminded Phil of a young Larry Grayson (TV casting directors take note).

Gwen Taylor as the neighbour Mrs Corden gets all the best Ortonesque dialogue and savours every delicious non sequitur and Malapropism; some of her lines sound as much like Alan Bennett or Victoria Wood as Orton (“He put his hand on my knee under the table at the Golden Egg”). Are they all basically the same person?

Keeping the whole play in a single room (the windows are wisely placed on the fourth wall) of their Noel Road flat, increases the tension and claustrophobia of the couple’s odd relationship and helps build naturally to the inevitable and tragic conclusion.

Director Daniel Kramer keeps the pace up and designer Peter McKintosh gets to have a lot of fun with the set which was the talking point for most of the Richmond audience during the interval. Phi has been inspired to take scissors to his old Plays and Players magazine collection and is currently beavering away on a new look for Andrew’s digs.

The death by hammer blow is agreeably violent and bloody but the big mystery remains: why did Orton stay with Halliwell? Simon Bent’s suggestion is that  Halliwell was essential to Orton’s writing. Still, the Whingers weren’t quite convinced. But then that, of course, is one of the great eternal mysteries of the Whingers too. Why is the one stolidly carrying the charisma-free deadweight of the other around?

Anyway, the cast received a very enthusiastic reception from the audience apart from Mr B 13 who upped and left before the curtain call was quite over. Orton would surely have approved.

Prick Up Your Ears plays Salford from 31st Aug to 5th Sept and Theatre Royal Brighton from 7th to 12th Sept before settling at the Comedy Theatre, London from 17th September. You can follow the production on Twitter if you are so disposed.