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.

Like Theatre Monkey’s website the book contains essential detail on the shortcomings of all the West End theatres, in particular the seats to avoid. This auditorium of shame is prefaced with a highly detailed set of chapters seemingly aimed primarily at first time visitors from Mars explaining what a theatre is, how to choose a show and how to go on the cheap.

Even the world-weary Whingers were able to acquire a new tip on saving money: apparently if you are in a wheelchair your carer gets to go free of charge. Andrew can’t sleep at night now, his mind awhirl with plans for how this might be brought to pass.

Anyway, obviously the first thing we did was to look up West End Whingers in the index but sadly there is no index so we had to laboriously read all the way up to page 3 where under the heading “Which to choose?” we found the following:

The acclaimed blog westendwhingers.wordpress.com records the cynical yet truthful opinions of two ordinary theatregoing folk.

Ordinary indeed.

Anyway, it’s available on Amazon for £6.99. It’s not quite as much of a bargain as Telegraph theatre critic Charles Spencer’s Under The Influence which Andrew recently purchased on Amazon for 1p (you can too) but if you’re the kind of person that buys Christmas presents, it’s apparently ideal for someone who likes Michael Ball or – unlikely though this may be – saw and enjoyed Last Chance Harvey.

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.

Jackson’s play is a wonderfully enjoyable poke at the manipulative machinations of the media and the nature of celebrity (Larry enjoyed a brief stint as a judge on the TV talent show Make Me An It Girl) which may be like shooting fish in a barrel. But when it’s this much fun who cares? The elephant in the rather tiny Trafalgar Studios 2 couldn’t be Max Clifford could it?

PP is refreshingly heavy on plot with a fine line in one liners such as the description of the addictive Larry as needing “more hits than Google to get him through the day”. But even when the lines aren’t quite so smart this wonderful three hander is directed so nimbly by Hanna Berrigan that every bit of comedy is squeezed out of them.

And the whole thing is delivered with such chutzpah and speed that you don’t really have time to linger over the plot holes. Not that that stopped Phil from asking Andrew why Larry who is in full damage limitation mode and is pumping his client for every detail of his indiscretion needs to watch TV to find out what has been printed in the newspapers? Surely even with paparazzi camped on his doorstep he’d have all the newspapers delivered or at least be trawling at them online.

Andrew explained that it was just a play and Phil eventually had to concede that in this case the thing was far too entertaining to dwell on such minor quibbles.*

Harman and Webb are both excellent, but the show really belongs to Dawes who is completely convincing as the likeable, slightly bumbling newsreader and he has a good line in “crumpled”.

We kind of can’t say any more about it but we will say this; the end of Act 1 GUARANTEES you will come back after the interval. Brilliant. Ignore the critics who have given it three stars: for the sheer entertainment value, the panache and the faultless performances you’ve got to give it four stars.

Footnotes

* Phil is also still marvelling at the technical stuff. He wants to know how did they turn down the sound on the TV (which remains on and in view of the audience throughout) and then turn the sound up later to have the right bit playing at the exact moment? Is the play so well timed that it runs at exactly the right length of time to match the TV? Impressive. Andrew just sighs.

** Interestingly, Steven Webb appeared as a child dancer along side Michael Jackson during the 1996 Brit Awards, getting knocked off stage and cracking a rib when Jarvis Cocker came on.

Special Exclusive West End Whingers Ticket Offer

If you want to pay £17.50 instead of the full £25 for any performance until 26 Nov just quote “WEST END WHINGERS” at the Box Office or when you phone on 0844 871 7627. Seriously. You can also get this discount online by going here and entering “WEW” in the promotion code box. The Whingers don’t get anything out of it at all. We’re doing this out of the goodness of our hearts and anyway we’re rubbish at business. Seriously. Try it.

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.*

To be honest, the Whingers weren’t quite sure what they were doing there themselves. Neither has ever read any Terry Pratchett nor had any inclination to do so. They also like Mark Ravenhill (from the little they know about him) and the idea of Mark Ravenhill more than they tend to like his plays and pantos (although we did enjoy Citizenship and The Bette Bourne Supremacy or whatever it was called).

Why were we there? Let’s call it a dogged commitment to open-mindedness in the face of all the evidence available to suggest that it practically never pays off.

Anyway, there we were. In the middle of an audience that SHRIEKED with excitement when the lights went down. Really. Shrieked.

It is 1860 and, as the blurb has it “two teenagers are thrown together by a tsunami that has destroyed Mau’s village and left Daphne shipwrecked on his South Pacific island, thousands of miles from home”.

Despite its mostly ploddingly linear narrative aimed at children, frankly there were great swathes of it that the Whingers really didn’t follow. Did Mau cause his entire island’s population to die by getting them to take their teletubbies masks off? If so, why? And why did they do it? Why did they have to pick big stones up from the bottom of the sea? Why was Daphne casually amputating someone’s leg in the corner of one scene? We must have missed something along the way. Or possibly quite a few things. Which is strange because although the Whingers often complain about playwrights telling instead of showing, Nation may well cause us to revise that maxim. Quite everything seemed to be shown and it was all rather exhausting and quite long. Certainly the first half took longer than an hour. We cannot speak for the second half.

If it all started off a bit The Tempest, the Whingers – clutching at some familiar flotsam to give them some cultural buoyancy – were reminded of The Lion King, A Christmas Carol, The Dark Crystal and even Hair seemed to have arrived earlier than expected (albeit without a decent song). The choreography was partly attributed to the “Nation Company”, and it showed. Were they told just to wiggle their grass skirts and improvise? Some particularly discordant music during the pig suckling scene (don’t ask) made Phil wonder if Benjamin Britten had wandered over from The Habit of Art in the auditorium next door. The Australian talking parrot (which says “boobies” and things like that) was extremely irritating and we could have rustled up a more convincing costume in minutes.

The acting was pretty unimpressive though to be fair to the cast the script is less dialogue than proclamations. There’s an awful lot of declamatory shouting going on. Some of the natives, who seem to have been styled after Ross Noble, seek refuge in the new country. “Will you turn us away or share your nation?”, they rather pompously demand. Phil got a a distinct whiff of worthiness.

But we did like some of the staging. Hats off to Melly Still for the brilliantly staged underwater scenes, a good storm and a decent tsunami.

But mostly we were all at sea. The gusty gales of young lungs laughing reminded the Whingers of watching a sketch on Crackerjack! and when you hear gasps from the audience at the word “shit” you know that you are in someone else’s brave new world (that has young people with very implausible hairdos in’t. Particularly the boys.

So, we’ll leave it for the young people to enjoy (which they clearly did) and put our bemusement down to crotchety middle age. Certainly this will be a popular play for schools to perform – a large cast, multi-racial, many opportunities for stage craft, lots of generic non-speaking islander roles for the too-many girls. It’s just one more reason for the Whingers to be grateful that they do not have any children.

Footnotes

* 15-25 year olds can see it for £5 or even for free.

The Whingers decamped to their club where they were treated to an unexpected but very impressive display of close up prestidigitation. Ah, how they appreciated some real magic at last. And as it was right under their sceptical probosci proved even more three dimensional than the Queen or Derren Brown in 3D.

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.

And if that preamble seems even more cautious and circuitous than normal, that’s perhaps because Mister Bennett’s play is too. For this is a play within a play and occasionally the Whingers did wonder whether the esteemed National Treasure was a little disappointed that the play he really wanted to write (Caliban’s Day, about an imagined reuniting of the estranged Auden and Benjamin Britten late in their lives) didn’t quite have enough meat on it to warrant being, well, a play.

So instead we have a somewhat chaotic rehearsal for Caliban’s Day overseen (in the absence of the director) by the stage manager Kay (Frances de la Tour, excellent) 90 percent of whose energies must seemingly be devoted to humouring the actors. Sulking mostly in the background is the author Neil.

Phil would have preferred that we stay with the main story of Britten (Alex Jennings) visiting Auden to enlist his help with Death in Venice but Andrew was more than happy with Mister Bennett’s mischievous ribbing of the process of making theatre and its egos, frailties and silliness (not least the deeply lined WH Auden prosthetic mask). Phil, on the other hand, interpreted Britten’s struggle to write his opera and its mirroring in the troubles of the creatives trying to put the play together as Mister Bennett trying to tell us how hard it is to create art. He’s already chronicled that THOA wasn’t easy to write. Surely Britain’s National Treasure isn’t expecting his audience to sit through two and a half hours of introspective hand-wringing?

Fortunately, and as you’d expect, much of it is very funny. Despite the necessarily unattractive and evenly lit set (Bob Crowley) you arrive in the auditorium nicely assured you’re in comfy Bennett territory with Ambrosia creamed rice, Fray Bentos and a tin of Vim littering the set. When did you last see a tin of Vim? Probably, like Phil, in your mother’s hand as she scrubbed the kitchen floor with an old pair of underpants. And Jennings is particularly hilarious as the very camp actor and only slightly less camp Britten when he finally arrives at Auden’s shambolic Oxford cottage. Britten isn’t the only visitor that evening as there’s another gentleman caller in the form Stuart (the ever-excellent Stephen Wight).

There are also some rather enjoyable pops at the National itself. The suggestion that the Cottesloe could be converted into a billiard hall was presumably written to play to the Whingers’ gallery, even if they were sitting in the front row of the stalls. It’s the best suggestion they’d heard in years.

And there was an undeniable frisson when a woman (also in the front row) was unable to silence her mobile phone, and rather than locating it and turning it off waited until it went off again five minutes later. With Griffiths famous for reprimanding a similar transgressor from the stage the Whingers held their breath. But alas he managed to ignore it

There was a lot of head scratching among the Whingers entourage afterwards (Webcowgirl and Helen Smith among others) as to what exactly Bennett was getting at. Phil thought he might be having an oblique pop at modern X Factor style fame after Stuart’s speech about Auden and Britten’s celebrity and what would the rest of us be remembered for. But he won’t be going into print with that theory.

All the elements of The History Boys are in place: author, cast, director (Nicholas Hytner), designer. And whilst it’s nice to see Bennett releasing his theatrical corsets as he ages, few people, at the time, seemed willing to mention how decidedly dodgy that play was.

Whilst the Whingers would rather be holding tickets for a new Bennett than almost any other contemporary playwright, he probably needs to move away from foolish old men lusting after younger ones. The Whingers would hate to be the ones to suggest that Britain’s National Treasure is morphing into a gay Benny Hill. Bennett Hill perhaps? There, we didn’t say that did we?

Footnote

Phil had been disappointed that ill health required Michael Gambon (initially cast as Auden) to pull out and be replaced by Richard Griffiths although, for various reasons, it seems quite the thing at the moment: Richard Briars and Adrian Scarborough (because he’s in The Habit of Art) had pulled out of Endgame, Kate Ashfield left Mrs Klein to be replaced by Zoe Waites and Matt Lucas was replaced by Con O’Neil in Prick Up Your Ears. There currently seem to be more withdrawals on the London stage than in a Catholic marriage.

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.