Review – Bullet Catch, National Theatre

Risk-averse? Us? No, no no. As recently as a few years ago the Whingers went white water rafting (well, brown water rafting, really) and only weeks ago went on Stealth at Thorpe Park (although Andrew did have to exercise a little last minute cajoling to get Phil on board). Obviously they survived to tell the tale, though had Phil not plumped for quad-biking in the dunes over Andrew’s suggestion of skydiving in Namibia it may well have been an entirely different story. Perhaps the Whingers have Phil’s fumbling in the recesses of cautiousness to thank for their longevity.

Generally though the Whingers’ risk-taking is limited to parting with money for untried, untested shows or, ipso facto, anything at the now defunct Cottesloe Theatre. But since its temporary replacement, The Shed, was offering “a unique theatrical experience featuring mind reading, levitation and, if you’re brave enough to stay for it, the most notorious finale in show business.” they just had to be there.

And when Rob Drummond asked for volunteers for his entertainment both waved their hands eagerly – like swots at the back of the class wishing to impress Sir – hoping it might be one of their fingers on the trigger in “a stunt so dangerous Houdini refused to attempt it, the Bullet Catch has claimed the lives of at least 12 people since its conception in 1613.” Oh yes, we both reached for The gun, the gun, the gun, the gun.

Review – The Hothouse, Trafalgar Studios / This House, National Theatre

We are of course far too indolent to check, but this is possibly our first conjoined review.

It’s a time thing really. We’re all behind, but in our defence there are parallels between these plays: both are “house”-titled, have on-stage, set-specific audience seating and are boisterously over-the-top comedic satires set in institutions run by dangerously potty people.

The Hothouse features John Simm, Simon Russell Beale, Indira Varma, John Heffernan, Clive Rowe and Christopher Timothy and the aforementioned chance to be up there with them. You’d be forgiven for assuming Andrew would have been there wouldn’t you?

Review – Othello National Theatre

We are not in the habit of issuing public service announcements but…

Check your tickets. Emily Mackay-ishly thinking to intimidate us by the use of quarter-hours, evening performances of Othello start at 7.15pm. Arrive on time so you won’t have to be guided to your seat in crepuscular gloom at the first suitable break in the proceedings. Goodness knows what it’ll be like at the upcoming Strange Interlude which starts at the even more intimidating 6.30pm. Just how long is it going to be? Anyone need a pair of tickets?

Anyhoo, as we departed the theatre (again the quarter, but this the one before 11pm) thoughts turned to the question of Adrian Lester‘s age and “Are Othellos – like policeman – getting younger?”

Review – Untold Stories, Duchess Theatre

There were uncomfortable shards of recognition at Alan Bennett‘s autobiographical Untold Stories.

Phil discovered that the contents of his kitchen cupboard are not dissimilar to those of Bennett’s parents: the long-forgotten ground white pepper, the glacé cherries (though not sitting in an egg cup), the container of cocktail sticks, and the stubborn dried up dribbles of food that need chipping at to remove, all lurking with other long-past-their-sell-by-date items way back behind more pressingly urgent comestibles.

And Phil’s mother is from Yorkshire too. Not that he’s suggesting his mother’s kitchen cupboards are anything other than immaculate. At last, here’s a show that gives you something to take away with you; that it’s time to consider a spring clean.*

The parallels in Cocktail Sticks, the second of this double bill of recollections, were sometimes a little too close to home and not just in the kitchen department.

Review – Children of the Sun, National Theatre

Thrilling!

Now here’s a first and a SPOILER ALERT but as this was a first preview we cannnot guarantee it will happen again.* Pity.

Maxim Gorky’s Children of the Sun** may have begun with a whimper but it certainly ended with a bang: a stage explosion so intense it probably finished off a few senior members of the audience (obviously we survived to tell the tale). The heat could be felt several rows back in the stalls. The shock was so great, Phil let out an involuntary “Jesus!” and possibly a little wee. But even more excitingly – such was its impact – it set off the Lyttleton’s fire alarm.

Theatre doesn’t get much better than this.

This is what the audience left the theatre talking about. What more does one need to say? It’s tempting to stop here.

Review – The Captain of Köpenick, National Theatre

There are very occasional trips to the theatre which create a real frisson of excitement, when you can feel your adrenalin flowing, your heart pounding and your moist palms gripping the edges of the seat as you lean forward with such tension that it’s almost impossible to breathe.

In truth, probably the last time that happened for the Whingers was when Neve Campbell fluffed her lines so spectacularly in Love Song. In those days we were ungentlemanly enough to mention it.

Review – The Effect, National Theatre

People ask us why we go to the theatre so much. Often we ask ourselves why we go at all.

Lucy Prebble‘s first post-ENRON play The Effect provides an answer: it’s a distraction from the fact that we’re all going to die. Everything is.

Review – The Magistrate, National Theatre

The National’s Christmas show this year sees the The Magistrate coming off the subs bench to fill in for the cancelled The Count of Monte Cristo. And how fortuitous this proves to be as the Whingers have learned – among other things – that The Krankies’ genius draws inspiration from no less a talent than Arthur Wing Pinero.

Review – People, National Theatre

These days new plays by Alan Bennett are cloaked in the kind of secrecy you might expect from a new Mike Leigh play or the latest Bond film.

But we’re not good at keeping secrets so if you don’t want to know anything about People we’ll just tell you that the running time is 2 hours 20 minutes we returned after the interval (it’s the new Bennett, why wouldn’t we?) and you can leave it at that.

Review – Damned by Despair, National Theatre

Dear Heavenly Father,

Forgive us our many sins. Forgive us for trespassing on previews and speaking ill of them. Forgive us for drinking too much holy wine. And forgive us for giving into temptation by departing at intervals.

And forgive us for our fundamentalism, believing that if we truly seek forgiveness it may be granted whatever our sins, for surely this is the message of Damned by Despair.

Forgive those who delivered that message: Roman Catholic monk Tirso de Molina who wrote it, Frank McGuinness who gave us his new version and director Bijan Sheibani.

Review – Scenes from an Execution, National Theatre

Scene: Sixteenth-century Venice. A glowing white cube descends from a vertiginous height containing a narrator type chappie (Gerrard McArthur) pretentiously called The Sketchbook (no, us neither). Or should white cube be White Cube? Scenes from an Execution is about art. Ah! Penny just dropped!

Obscene?: Artist Galactia (Fiona Shaw on fine form) is semi-naked sketching her naked younger lover and duplicitously compromising fellow-artist Carpeta (Jamie Ballard - also good). She’s a supremely talented artist (he’s not) and sensualist with a bit of a gobby mouth (Battleaxe Galactia?). They thrash about on a rock together. We’re later told she’s pretty nifty with her tongue. Carpeta seems to confirm this.

Review – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, National Theatre

You wouldn’t, of course. But in the unlikely chance you should ever pause to wonder how Phil behaves in a train toilet* then hasten yourself along to see the The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

This is not intended to put you off booking a ticket for Simon Stephens‘ adaptation of Mark Haddon‘s novel about Christopher (Luke Treadaway) a 15-year-old mathematics wiz occupying a position somewhere on the autism/aspergers spectrum.

Christopher discovers his neighbour’s dog dead (Ken Dodd’s dog died. Did he? No, Doddy), impaled by a garden fork. Initially under suspicion himself, his enthusiasm for Sherlock Holmes inspires him to embark on his own investigation but he uncovers more than he bargains for.

Andrew had read the book and liked it very much. Phil had heard of it. But it really shouldn’t have worked for the Whingers. TCIOTDITNT is presented with the unfortunate double handicap of: 1. in-the-round staging and 2. at the Cottesloe, eek. Yet, and it sticks in our throats to say, it’s seems the ideal location and the one occasion where a perch in one of the theatre’s upper levels affords a terrific overview of the frequently stunning visuals. The graph-paper stage by the prolific Bunny Christie (need we say more?), lighting by Paule Constable and video design by Finn Ross all but threaten to steal the show.

Review – The Doctor’s Dilemma, National Theatre

The Whingers have to make big decisions too you know.

Phil was so incandescent when he heard incandescent light bulbs were being phased out that he stocked up forgetting that most of his home was already lit by halogen down lighters anyway, with just one lamp (which he rarely switches on) using the old bulbs.

He never learns (he was the same when gas lighting was phased out). There’s no chance he’ll get through all of them in his lifetime. What should he do with his box of 50 bulbs?

In George Bernard Shaw’s what-it-says-on-the-tin play The Doctor’s Dilemma bachelor and newly-knighted Sir Colenso Ridgeon (Aden Gillett) is also in a quandary. He treats typhoid, the plague and has developed a new treatment for tuberculosis. If only he could find a cure for the highly contagious modern malady Superfluous Like Syndrome which afflicts the younger (and some not so young) generation of today; introducing several unnecessary ’like’s into every sentence they utter.*

Review – Timon of Athens, National Theatre

So, on vellum then, not looking too promising. 

Rarely performed and generally considered to be one of Shakespeare’s problem plays, Timon of Athens has had just one outing on The Broadway, according to the gospel of St Wiki.

Apparently it was co-authored by Thomas Middleton and is incomplete. Who knows? (Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance probably).

Two of them writing together and they couldn’t finish it? Was there a more pressing stack of ironing? Sounds scarily familiar to us. Unfinished is a bit of a conundrum: might it go on forever or end abruptly in under three hours? TOA sounded a bit of a tease.

Review – The Last of the Haussmans, National Theatre

You wait an age for a play about free-spirited people who behaved selfishly in the sixties and how their behaviour made lost souls of their offspring desperate to get their hands on property…

Well, you know the rest.

The Quink from the Whingers’ quills had barely dried from their uncharacteristically and almost unbridled rave about Mike Bartlett’s Love, Love, Love at the Royal Court and here they were again ploughing territory with spookily similar themes.

Expectations had already been running unreasonably high with Julie Walters, Rory Kinnear, Helen McCrory and Matthew Marsh in the cast. Imagine being the playwright Stephen Beresford and finding that lot in your first play The Last of the Haussmans - and on a proper National Theatre stage and not even tucked away in the Cottesloe.