Review – Oedipus with Ralph Fiennes, National Theatre

The Whingers love their mothers of course, just not in that way.

But how could they resist the opportunity to take in Ralph Fiennes as that titular and original mother-f**** Oedipus at the National Theatre?

Oedipal themes then; whatever made director Jonathan Kent* think of Fiennes for this? Was he having a larf? Not of course that we’re implying anything Oedipal in Fiennes relationship with Francesca Annis but they were famously coupled after starring together when she played Gertrude to Fiennes’ Hamlet.

Review – Her Naked Skin, National Theatre

There really are some rather spooky coincidences connecting the Whingers to the National’s new lesbian prison drama set against the backdrop of the fight for votes for women in Edwardian England.

Phil – who is very emancipated – feels a particular affinity with the movement: his grandmother was a suffragette; his uncle was governor of Strangeways Prison where suffragette Derby Day martyr Emily Wilding Davison was detained; Phil himself was hooked on the seventies suffragette TV drama Shoulder to Shoulder; and in the days when he cycled (before Dave and Boris made it unfashionable) he used to chain his bike to railings.

And Andrew is a Lesbian. Well, he isn’t actually one at the moment, but he hopes one day to become part of the Lesbian community once he has saved up enough to buy the little Greek hideaway he’s always hankered after.

Review – The Emperor Jones, National Theatre

Andrew would have loved this one.

The play that launched Eugene O’Neill’s career The Emperor Jones turned into a music and dance spectacle with a multi-cultural cast and all over without an interval in a mere 70 minutes.

Where could Andrew have been? Well, as regular readers will know, since seeing the abysmal Take Flight at the Menier Chocolate Factory Andrew’s been inspired to do a little of his own flying solo. Only last Thursday he inveigled himself to join a posse of fellow theatrical bloggers at The Bacchae without so much as a nod to poor Phil who was desperate to see Alan Cumming’s bottom for the nth time.