The 2012 Whingie Awards – the very worst and the not so bad

Inappropriately, since it was the Olympic year, we’re a bit late off the starting blocks with our highly-anticipated annual Whingie Awards.

Frankly we believed we might not need to bother. The world was going to end. Andrew had packed his onesie and headed off to Bugarach. Phil was left sitting around in his meggins self-medicating in preparation musing which shows would be the theatrical cockroaches that might survive the impending apocalypse.

The Mousetrap obviously, Phantom and The Woman in Black no doubt, though perhaps Viva Forever! should hunker in a bunker and pray.

Of course it wasn’t the end after all. The world continues and we must carry on going to the theatre. It’s a bit of a let down. But as we toast the new and possibly unlucky New Year of 2013 we’ve had our hands down the back of the theatrical sofa digging for the occasional treasure, copious amounts of fluff and the occasional best-forgotten unmentionable.

Review – The Effect, National Theatre

People ask us why we go to the theatre so much. Often we ask ourselves why we go at all.

Lucy Prebble‘s first post-ENRON play The Effect provides an answer: it’s a distraction from the fact that we’re all going to die. Everything is.

Review – The Master Builder, Almeida

Call the Guinness Book of Records! Call Norris McWhirter! Call Roy Castle! Loudly!

Sometimes you wonder about a title of a play and think, how did they come up with that? Sometimes you find yourself waiting for the title  to appear. But there is no waiting or wondering here. Not in Ibsen‘s The Master Builder at the Almeida.

It must surely hold the record for the number of times the title of the play is name checked in the piece itself. It boasts its own redundant form of product placement.

Review – Dido Queen of Carthage, National Theatre

Strange really. In spite of the pledge that appears at the top of every page of this website the Whingers have never actually had the opportunity to tell you whether it’s worth missing the Merlot for the Marlowe.

Since they were born three years ago out of the foam created by the severed genitals of Uranus in the sea near Cyprus* the Whingers have consumed bathtubs of Merlot but their paths have never crossed that of Mister Christopher Marlowe.

All that was put to rights on Tuesday evening at the press night of  Dido Queen of Carthage at the National.