Posts Tagged ‘Anne-Marie Duff’
Wednesday 10 April 2019

Hurrah. At last. A proper musical.
Some of us are old enough to remember that 1966 was not only the year of a particular World Cup but also when Sweet Charity emerged. Those were the days, when people really knew what a hummable tune was.
Can you imagine Come From Away or especially Fun Home winning Olivier Awards and Tony Awards five decades ago? No, we can’t either. And Dear Evan Hansen may be fabulously tune-filled but at the prices it’s charging we will probably never know. Don’t be fooled that the “Dear” of the title is just a form of address. We’d welcome a little less ambiguity and suggest they call it Expensive Evan Hansen.
But we digress. This is a show which positively aches with catchy numbers in Cy Coleman‘s music (enhanced by and Dorothy Fields‘ lyrics) – “Big Spender”, “If My Friends Could See Me Now”, “There’s Gotta Be Something Better Than This”, “I’m A Brass Band” and “I Love To Cry At Weddings”. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in West End Whingers | Leave a Comment »
Tags: Adrian Lester, Anne-Marie Duff, Arthur Darvill, Beverley Knight, Clive Rowe, Cy Coleman, Debbie Kurup, Donmar Warehouse, Dorothy Fields, entertainment, Gareth Valentine, Josie Rourke, Lizzy Connolly, London, musical, Neil Simon, play, review, Robert Jones, Shaq Taylor, Sweet Charity, theatre, Wayne McGregor, west end
Wednesday 28 February 2018

Phil’s only seen seen The Scottish Play once before. And that was some 30 years ago.
To put that into some kind of a context his tally of other shows runs roughly thus: 42nd Street (5 times), Into the Woods (5), La Cage Aux Folles (5), Follies (8), and Sweeney Todd (8). Shows where his priorities lie. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in West End Whingers | 3 Comments »
Tags: Amaka Okafor, Anne-Marie Duff, entertainment, Hauk Pattison, James Francombe, Kevin Harvey, London, Macbeth, National Theatre, Orlando Gough, play, Rae Smith, review, Rory Kinnear, Rufus Norris, theatre, west end, William Shakespeare
Monday 3 June 2013
What are the chances?
You wait an eternity for an infidelity tragi-comedy in which the audience are party to the characters’ innermost thoughts and then you are afforded two in a row.
Just days after visiting Passion Play, where actors play the two main characters’ alter egos, comes Eugene O’Neill‘s 1928 Pulitzer Prize-winner Strange Interlude in which every character makes asides to the audience revealing what they’re really thinking. It’s the Shakespearean device by way of TV’s Peep Show.
Andrew had chickened out of this one on the grounds of life being too short but Phil gamely picked up the cudgel or something and as he occasionally has thoughts in his heads too, has been inspired to go with the zeitgeist and opening up the peculiar workings of his own psyche. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in West End Whingers | 9 Comments »
Tags: Anne-Marie Duff, Charles Edwards, Darren Pettie, entertainment, Eugene O'Neill, Geraldine Alexander, Jason Watkins, London, Lyttelton Theatre, National Theatre, play, review, Simon Godwin, Soutra Gilmour, Strange Interlude, theatre, west end
Monday 28 March 2011
Tuesday 22nd March 2011: Stephen Sondheim’s 81st birthday (and by an ironic coincidence also Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 63rd).
What a relief. We can relax again knowing we no longer need to assist Mr Sondheim in celebrating his 8oth. It has been a too, too exhausting year.
But now Mr Rattigan is making similar demands on us from beyond the grave in commemoration of what would be his 100th.
We had already tooted into our party blowers for his Flare Path a few days earlier. Now we were required to quaff bubbly again at the Old Vic for his last play (originally for radio), written in 1977, Cause Célèbre. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in West End Whingers | 13 Comments »
Tags: Alma Rattenbury, Anne-Marie Duff, Cause Célèbre, entertainment, Freddie Fox, Hildegard Bechtler, Jenny Galloway, London, Niamh Cusack, Nicholas Jones, Old Vic, play, review, Terrence Rattigan, Thea Sharrock, theatre, Timothy Carlton, Tommy McDonnell, west end