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 – Twelfth Night, The Globe Theatre

In the general scheme of things it shouldn’t seem that extraordinary that this was Phil’s first trip to The Globe, after all Andrew is still able to boast that his Les Misérables hymen remains chastely intact and probably always will be.

But an all-male chicks-with-dicks Twelfth Night with the starry combo of Mark Rylance and Stephen Fry proved too tempting a theatrical carrot in the slightly theme park-ish Globe. And there was added intrigue; Rylance was reprising his Olivia of 10 years ago while Fry was thesping on a stage again for the first time since he famously absconded from Cell Mates. All that and TN (with Richard III) will transfer for a run in the West End courtesy of Dame Sonia Friedman. A Globe first surely?

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 – Bingo, Young Vic

Picture this. The Whingers at the Young Vic, seated between two fat ladies (88), forcing them to squeeze their legs (11) tightly together before getting their eyes down for Bingo.

Partick Stewart stars; what else could it be but a full house?

Review – The Comedy of Errors, National Theatre

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE WROTE A DECENT JOKE – WHINGERS IN SHOCK.

The Whingers make no secret of the fact that they usually find the the comedy in his plays and the wordplay in his comedies deeply unfunny. Yes, they sometimes laugh thanks to an actor’s delivery or a bit of business injected by a director aware that the text will not supply sufficient giggles for a modern audience. But at The Comedy of Errors they actually laughed at a line written by the Bard himself.

Just the once, you understand, but it’s a start. For the record it was in one of the Dromio’s “I could find out countries in her” speech referencing Belgium and the Netherlands. Shakespeare of course invented everything. Was he the first to discover the intrinsic comic value in Belgium too?

Review – Much Ado About Nothing, Wyndham’s Theatre

In which Phil goes all Statto.

Commercially speaking, it doesn’t really matter what the critics or the audiences or anyone thinks about this show, let alone the Whingers.

The inspired pairing of David Tennant and Catherine Tate ensured Doctor Who About Nothing quickly became a big to-do about something, practically selling out before previews began; probably even before the cast had started running their fingers under their lines.

Caught up in the frenzy, Phil spent a couple of hours trying to buy tickets on a crashing website when booking opened, getting to the point of nabbing two excellent seats only to lose them. And again. And again…

Review – Twelfth Night, Cottesloe Theatre

NT: Peter Hall, you’re 80th birthday is coming up and we wondered if you had any thoughts about a gift?
PH: I’d like to give you another Twelfth Night.
NT: We-ell, it’s traditional for the birthday boy to be the recipient really. Go on. We’ve had a whip-round. What would you like?
PH: Yes, Twelfth Night I think.
NT: How about a nice foot spa?
PH: My daughter can be Viola.
NT: *Sigh*. Oh, all right  then.
PH: A nice, slow version I think.
NT: Both of our big auditoriums appear to be booked up. I’m afraid it will have to be the Cottesloe.

Review – Romeo and Juliet, RSC at the Roundhouse

Setting aside the cold cuts, the chocolate brazils and the tins of Quality Street the Whingers just had to get out of their houses for a bit of light relief in the form of some Shakespeare.

Shakespeare? Goodness wasn’t there another episode of Celebrity Come Dine With Me to keep them glued to their cathode ray tubes?

But festive television was beginning to pall. A sub-standard Doctor Who made Andrew pine for the return of David Tennant (controversial, we know), nothing greater than an occasional smile was to be had from the much trailed Come Fly With Me and the Whingers’ new BFF Miranda Hart seemed to be in danger of over-exposure.

Only the triumphant return of Upstairs Downstairs with the indomitable combination of Anne Reid, Jean Marsh, Dame Eileen Atkins and Adrian Scarborough prevented Andrew from advertising his television set on freecycle along with all the “gifts” he received from Phil.

Review – Hamlet with Rory Kinnear, National Theatre

There may be something rotten looking at the state of Phil’s fridge but – housekeeping aside – let it be never said that the Whingers were anything but fastidious, especially when it comes to self-improvement.

Well have you ever been to a performance of Hamlet with someone who had a degree in Shakespearean dramaturgy? Well, we did. On Saturday night. We acquired the services of someone called @kerrypolka off Twitter who patiently explained things to us, sometimes several times, over a glass of wine after the preview performance.

We think she was rather pleased with our progress and produced from her handbag some sample GCSE papers for us.

Review – Hamlet with Jude Law, Donmar at the Wyndham’s Theatre

Who could have envisaged that Phil would get to direct Mr Jude Law in Mr Shakespeare‘s Hamlet in the auspicious Donmar West End season?

For in an implausible and rather Shakespearean case of mistaken identity that’s how it seemed on Tuesday night.* During the interval Phil bumped into someone he’d met on a work trip a couple of years ago who turned to her companion and introduced Phil with the words “This is Michael Grandage, the director”.

How Phil wished he had carried on the conceit but Andrew was laughing at the idea too much. The woman was quite insistent “But you look just like him.”

Ah well, put it down to it being the hottest night of the year or perhaps the fact that Phil had walked head first into a plate glass window in Spain a few days earlier and radically altered his facial features (considerably for the better, clearly).

Review – King Lear with Pete Postlethwaite, Young Vic

Phil was having one of his cross days:

“Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Smite flat the thick rotundity o’ the world!
Crack nature’s moulds, an germens spill at once,
That make ingrateful man,” said Phil.

“Look, it’s just a drop of rain; it’s hardly spitting,” protested Andrew.

“And besides I’ve got a brolly.

“Do you want to go and see King Lear at the Young Vic or not,” asked Andrew, his patience wearing somewhat thin.

The answer was clearly going to be “not” and so it was that Phil passed up on the opportunity to witness what promised to be one of the most innovative productions of a William Shakespeare play since the Pie Crust Players had a stab at Hamlet under the direction of Julie Walters in the classic Victoria Wood sketch (sadly and strangely not on YouTube).

Review: Twelfth Night, Donmar West End

Ok, sit down. Take a deep breath, take a Valium and take the day off. The Whingers are about to start chucking a few superlatives around.

You may well think you’ve come to the wrong place (indeed you almost certainly have) as it’s well documented that the Whingers don’t really do Shakespeare, especially the comedies as they’re usually even less comic than My Family.

But director Michael Grandage (named Best Director at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards for Othello / The Chalk Garden / Ivanov) can do little wrong at the moment in the Whingers’ eyes.

And last night he caused the Whingers actually to laugh. Not once, but over and over again. Out loud. At a Shakespeare play.

The West End Whingers Guide to Stratford-upon-Avon

The West End Whingers are proud to present to you their very own heritage walk of Stratford-upon-Avon, birthplace of the famous playwright William Shakespeare.

Strangely, you won’t find these landmarks in any guidebook but the Whingers have studiously researched them from first principles – by trudging the length and breadth of Stratford-upon-Avon and using their eyes and their minds.

Review – Hamlet with David Tennant, RSC, Stratford-upon-Avon

Yes, yes, we know it’s not the West End and that it’s Shakespeare, but it had to be done.

Done by Andrew, anyway. Phil refused to be dragged away from his metropolitan “lifestyle” (Let us hope that involved him doing something about the state of his fridge for there is surely something rotten in it) for a trip to Stratford-upon-Avon.

Even now Phil insists that it is necessary to change trains to get there and refuses to listen to Andrew’s account of the contemporary transport arrangements. He utterly refutes Andrew’s report that there are no longer such things as third class carriages. Andrew has held his tongue.

Oh well, every dog has his day and so, it was that Sue K (Clarification: Andrew is the dog in this analogy, not Sue) stepped into Phil’s fill-in mode. And the first thing to report is that an evening at the theatre apparently does not necessarily involve bickering. This was something of revelation to Andrew who found the entire outing both intellectually stimulating and emotionally restful.