Review – Magic Goes Wrong, Vaudeville Theatre

Phil thinks he knows a thing or two about magic.

After all it was he who was selected by Paul Daniels to perform alongside him and the lovely Debbie McGee in their Edinburgh show a few years back, taking part in a few tricks and ultimately facing the guillotine. When you’re kneeling with your head trapped in a lunette and staring into a head-catching basket stage nerves are replaced by a certain fear of what happens if something should go wrong.

So Phil has not inconsiderable respect for the sheer technical wizardry involved in Mischief Theatre‘s latest venture Magic Goes Wrong (the second production of their year long residency in the west end), in which the team play a hotchpotch of magicians presenting a charity event that of course goes disastrously wrong. Think Tommy Cooper but with a massive budget.

Review – Peter Pan Goes Wrong, Apollo Theatre

If you saw Olivier Award-winning The Play That Goes Wrong (now at the Duchess Theatre for the foreseeable) you’ll have a pretty good idea what to expect from Peter Pan Goes Wrong.

Goes Wrong veterans will know to occupy their seats well before curtain up to experience the pre-show madness. Goes Wrong virgins should heed this tip.

The Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society are at it again putting the corn in Cornley and the Polly in Polytechnic (there is a parrot) in a seasonal offering with a much bigger budget and with more spectacularly disastrous results.

Review – Showstopper! The Improvised Musical, Apollo Theatre

The Whingers once created a musical.

Needless to say it ran for one solitary but (we thought) rather fabulous performance. To put that in a context, that’s 4 less than Broadway’s infamous flop musical Carrie’s official performance run and on a par with DJ Mike Read‘s Oscar Wilde musical, Oscar.

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.