Review – London Wall, St James Theatre

You can rely on the teensy Finborough Theatre (from whence this transferred) to find obscure works worth reviving. London Wall has been described as long-forgotten. Not by us. We’d have have had to have some memory of it in the first place to have forgotten it now.

We also knew little about its playwright. We didn’t know John Van Druten directed the original production of The King and I. All we knew him for was his 1951 play based on the Christopher Isherwood stories that formed the basis for the musical Cabaret. That was called I am a Camera; it’s small wonder they named a Broadway theatre after the critic Walter Kerr who famously came up with the succinctly brilliant review for it, “Me no Leica”.

Review – Desperately Seeking The Exit, Leicester Square Theatre

We have observed before how carefully one must choose the title of one’s show lest critics, sub-editors or even pesky bloggers get their hands on it and turn it on its head and here is Peter Michael Marino doing it to himself, sort of, with a bit of help from Charlie Spencer.

Having eventually recovered from a year long bout of depression and a severe case of haemorrhoids the writer of the 2007 West End flop musical Desperately Seeking Susan has nicked a quote from Charles Spencer’s review and used it for his one man piece Desperately Seeking the Exit (director John Clancy) which explains what went wrong.

The Whingers never saw DSS and we’re not even sure why. We’re both very partial to The Blondie, whose songs were purloined to musicalise the plot from the 1985 film (memorable because (a) it featured Madonna and (b) she wasn’t terrible in it).

How bad could the musical version have been? As bad as Paradise Found? Viva Forever! (which has just announced it is not quite forever)? Or the so-bad-it-was-(almost)-good Too Close to the Sun? Surely not.

Review – Trelawny of the Wells, Donmar

Bit late in the day with this one and frankly we weren’t going to bother writing it up as it closes on Saturday. But we’ll forget that we saw it otherwise. That’s not to say it’s forgettable. It’s just us.

Andrew was a Trelawny of the Wells virgin. Phil saw the starry Helena Bonham Carter version at the then Comedy Theatre 20-odd years ago; rather unfortunately the National also staged it around the same time. Oops. Phil remembered that it featured Michael Hordern, Jason Connery and Margaret Courtenay but had completely forgotten that cosmonaut-in-waiting Sarah Brightman also starred. How could he forget that? It seemed necessary to record our visit, if only for ourselves. You should feel no obligation to read any further.

Review – Before the Party, Almeida Theatre

Here’s a puzzler to confound, should you happen to find yourself at a party surrounded by theatrically persuaded people: What is the connection between Before the Party and the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?

Give up? Well, the latter wouldn’t be quite the same without the formers’s writer. Academy Award nominee, Hitchcock collaborator and BTP playwright Rodney Ackland is also credited with discovering Chitty star Sally Anne Howes. That’s if you believe the Gospel according to St Wiki. We do. Who would think to make that up?

But his 1949 play (based on a short story by W. Somerset Maugham) is a bit of a puzzler itself. Part family drama, part melodrama,  part satire, part comedy and – in this production – bearing absurdist overtones and (rather redundantly)  animation. It’s as if Ackland were delving into the darker recesses of Terrance Rattigan’s psyche and percolating it through a wafer thin filter of Joe Orton.

Review – Leslie Jordan – Fruit Fly, Leicester Square Theatre

Walking through Leicester Square last night en route to a post-show tincture the Whingers were discussing the square’s new look. Phil related a story about how he was criticising the square’s new metal railings to a friend, not realising he was talking to the person behind its redesign. Oops.

Phil then rambled on about the new(ish) look of Kensington High Street and how it has a very clean feel. “Your mother would like it” replied Andrew sagely.

Andrew is often telling Phil, “You sound like your mother” despite never having met her. Both Whingers spent the Mothering Sunday weekends with their respective mothers and Phil can confirm that he becomes more like her with each passing day. Andrew is probably making the transformation as well (hopefully into his own mother, not Phil’s), but has yet to admit it.

Anyway, in Fruit Fly, Leslie Jordan (Will and Grace‘s Beverley Leslie) asks if it is the fate of all gay men to turn into their mothers and by illustrating his show with some fabulous family photographs he makes a pretty good case.

Review – Longing, Hampstead Theatre

Choosing a title for your play must be a bit like negotiating a minefield. It’s a wonder Princess Diana never got involved.

Unless you’re Ernie Wise or Alan Ayckbourn you’ve probably spent months, possibly years, crafting, polishing and honing it. And surely then dithering over a name by which it will be known for perpetuity.

A very good play with an iffy title may, possibly, not matter too much. But a bad play with the wrong moniker can give critics a field day.

Review – The Tailor-Made Man, Arts Theatre

The Whingers had only the vaguest memories of the story of William Haines (Phil was sure he’d read about him in Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon but wasn’t certain), the Hollywood leading man turned interior designer-to-the-stars. But then most of the Whingers’ memories are vague these days.

Haines (Dylan Turner) came to fame in the twenties after winning a talent show (perhaps X Factor winners should consider enrolling in interior design courses to ensure they have a fall-back) and was what we used to call a homosexual, but one who wouldn’t stick to convention or studio rules and lived for 50 years with his ex-marine partner Jimmie (Bradley Clarkson) in an relationship so open that his second home was the docks and his film career (which included Tell It to the Marines, Navy Blues and The Marines Are Coming) ended when he was arrested for picking up a jolly jack tar. The Whingers are tempted to stop sniffing their Magic Marker pens for a moment and use them to alter the posters for The Tailor-Made Man, a musical about Haines’ nautically nuanced life, to the equally apt The Sailor-Mad Man.

Review – Dear World, Charing Cross Theatre

It’s potty time for the Whingers.

In the whiffy wake of The Captain of Köpenick and its distinctive USP (a woman performing her number twos into a chamberpot live on the Olivier stage) we are now granted another form of potty: madness.

Dear World, falls between two, err, stools with its lunacy. On the one hand there is the cuckoo Countess Aurelia (AKA Jean Giraudoux‘s The Madwoman of Chaillot) and on the other the brave decision to stage Jerry Herman‘s decidedly barmy 1969 “musical fable” (original book by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, new version by David Thompson) at all. This is a show that flopped badly on Broadway despite a Tony Award-winning turn from Angela Lansbury.

Review – The Turn of the Screw, Almeida Theatre

Those with no interest in Gothic theatrical hokum which seeks to titillate audiences and make them jump in their seats should look away now.

And those of a more nervous disposition might think about placing a plastic bag between their derrière and velveteen Almeida theatre bench.

This is the turn of Rebecca Lenkiewicz* at Henry James‘ ghost story; the famous novella which has inspired a slew of TV, opera and film versions and comes with no small amount of pedigree and a degree of baggage. Many will already know that The Turn of the Screw is not – as the title might suggest to the uninitiated – set in a prison wing’s shower block.

Review – Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with Priscilla Presley, New Wimbledon Theatre

Disney’s animated version celebrated its 75th anniversary on the very day the world was due to end. With apparently only a few days left to fill, Andrew was ratcheting the Whingers up into fully festive panto mode.

Phil declined Andrew’s offer of a flashing fairy wand at the gift shop so Andrew tried to engage with with a little game. “What would your name be if you were one of the seven dwarfs?” he asked. Unsurprisingly it didn’t take long for the Whingers to rechristen themselves with the interchangeable monikers of Sloshed and Tiddly.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs* had an awful lot to beat, let alone live up to. The New Wimbledon’s last panto starred the irrepressible Dame Edna dipping her heels into the genre for the first time with enormous success. But the theatre that is now celebrated for its splendidly off-the-wall seasonal casting now features someone who is not only making their first panto appearance, but, at the age of 67, her first ever stage appearance to boot.

Review – Our Boys, Duchess Theatre

“Ok, so let me get this straight” fretted Phil as he wrestled to grasp clarity from Andrew over the casting of the military hospital-based play Our Boys.

“The one who lost his toes was in Doctor Who and the one who’d been circumcised was in Harry Potter,” came the barely disguised impatient response.

Phil was up to speed on Laurence Fox. He’s the one in that John Thaw spin-off thingy, married Billie Piper and is the son of James Fox (or perhaps Edward Fox if you saw Lorraine Kelly’s interview on Day-Glo Daybreak which became even more watch-through-your-fingers excruciating as LK exacerbated for her paternity gaff with profuse over-apologising).

Casting settled then and an explanation for the bevy of post-show lurkers at the Duchess Theatre’s stage door: apparently at least half the cast can boast something of a following.

Review – Charley’s Aunt, Menier Chocolate Factory

It used to be said that Roddy Llewellyn once had a small part in Charley’s Aunt.

Tee hee. That silly old chestnut of a gag that naturally appeals to the Whingers’ puerile sense of humour. But then Brandon Thomas‘ Charley’s Aunt is a silly old (1892) chestnut of a comedy and strangely one they Whingers had never seen despite its fame and its illustrious roll call of famous ‘Aunts’ (listed in the Menier programme) which includes Noël Coward, Rex Harrison, Arthur Askey, John Gielgud, Frankie Howard, Danny La Rue, John Inman, John Mills, Griff Rhys Jones and Mel Smith.*

It is indeed the comic cross-dresser’s Hamlet.

Review – 42nd Street, New Wimbledon Theatre

You want the good news or bad news first?

The Good

The classic story of a chorus girl who goes on to become a star when the leading lady breaks her ankle tale is the stuff of musical legend. No complaints there.

Lots and LOTS and LOTS of tap dancing from the off and a hugely satisfying pair of big numbers at the end with a large cast of hoofers banging away like crazy.

The costumes. Lots of them.

The songs lyrics by Al Dubin, and music by Harry Warren.

Marti Webb can sing. So can Dave Willetts (but he sadly gets little opportunity).

The Bad

The book by Michael Stewart and Mark Bramble is a laugh-free zone that makes Top Hat‘s book look like a collaboration between Noel Coward and Oscar Wilde. Was it really that bad when Phil saw the show back in the 80s?

The ‘gags’ (if one can flatter them thusly) are delivered with such over-emphasis they barely produce a titter from the audience. The Whingers couldn’t even raise the enthusiasm to groan.

…and the Ugly

The sets. Oh dear, even by touring standards these must be pretty poor. What Phil remembers from the original Broadway and West End productions was the spectacle. Here, as so much has been spent on a large cast economics have presumably reduced them to a series of drops. One didn’t make sense at all, some sort of geometric floral motif vaguely reminiscent of the terrible London 2012 logo.

Dorothy Brock’s dressing room was very battered around the edges but perhaps this was a metaphor. And while we’re on the subject, there was a working door into it so why do some of the cast enter and exit her room from the sides? Rather ill-mannered of them in our view.

Act 2 sees a slight improvement with a big light-up staircase and a 3Dish version of a Philadelphia station.

The terribly flat lighting.

The audience. Yup, chatting again throughout the overtures, repeating what passed for jokes at full volume and the woman behind us who appeared to be practising ballon sculpting with her plastic bag.

Footnote

We must end on some good news. This was the first time we’d been in the New Wimbledon‘s revamped circle bar now known as the Piano Bar. It’s been given a spanking make-over with such a lovely wooden floor Andrew and Phil were tempted to put on their tap shoes and try it out. More good news; they resisted.

Rating

Review – Torch Song Trilogy, Menier Chocolate Factory

You need only look at the posters on the walls of Soutra Gilmour’s set in the third play/act of Torch Song Trilogy to pick up little nods to the stage histories of the play’s author, its director (Douglas Hodge) and even one of its award-winning performers. There’s visual cross-referencing alongside cross-dressing in Harvey Fierstein’s comedy-drama.

TST started out as 3 individual plays: The International Stud, Fugue in a Nursery and Widows and Children First which were then condensed into this Best Play Tony-winning trilogy 30 odd years ago.

It hardly needs saying the Whingers are mature ancient enough to have seen it first time round. Andrew didn’t care for it much even then. Phil was impressed when he saw it on The Broadway; but then that was a different era altogether.

Review – Educating Rita, Menier Chocolate Factory

Saturday evening.

Philly-no-mates had nothing booked in the diary. What to do? Take up an impromptu offer (presumably no one else being available) to revisit the Menier Chocolate Factory‘s Educating Rita now starring Claire Sweeney as the titular heroine or stay in on his tod and flick restlessly between TV ‘talent’ shows.

Sweeney or tod?

Phil dithered. He doesn’t normally like visiting the theatre on a Saturday evening* and whilst the decision was not exactly on a par with Sophie’s Choice he weighed up the options fastidiously. The Whingers had enjoyed it enormously two years ago; surely only disappointment would ensue.