Review – Mrs Klein, Almeida Theatre

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?

In which Phil uses his loaf for once

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:

Review – Terror 2009, Southwark Playhouse

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.

Review – Enron, Royal Court

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.

Review – Comedians, Lyric Hammersmith

‘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.

Review – The Fastest Clock in the Universe, Hampstead Theatre

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.

Review – Annie Get Your Gun, Young Vic

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.

Review – Endgame, Duchess Theatre

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?

In which the Whingers pull out of Jordan

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.

In Which The Whingers Do Jordan

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.

Review – Bette Bourne and Mark Ravenhill: A Life in Three Acts, Soho Theatre

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?

Review – Inherit the Wind, Old Vic

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.

Review – Punk Rock, Lyric Hammersmith

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.

Review – Ben Hur Live!, O2 Arena

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…

Review – Talent by Victoria Wood, Menier Chocolate Factory

“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.