Review – Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, Apollo Theatre

Everybody has been talking about Everybody’s Talking About Jamie and dusting it with the glitter of 4 and 5 star reviews as though glitter were about to be banned.

Trouble is we’ve seen this sort of brouhaha before. And you don’t have to go back too far to look at the West End’s ever-expanding graveyard of British Musicals that were garlanded with superlatives at the time but were either near misses (Bend it Like Beckham) or totally lame misfires (cf. Mrs Henderson Presents, The Girls, Made in Dagenham). Critics are all too ready to big up the latest crock.

Some mopping up – Hot Tin/ Slaves of Solitude / Young Marx

For those kind folk (that should probably read as singular rather than plural) who have been interested enough to ask where Phil’s been, here lies the answer. Hip replacement don’t you know, beating Patti LuPone to the crutches by a matter of weeks. He feels Patti’s pain. And he’s just beginning to dip the toe on the end of his newly bionic leg back into the world of theatre that doesn’t come with a surgeon and anaesthetist.

Review – Peter Pan Goes Wrong, Apollo Theatre

It’s very rare that people ever take Phil’s advice. But after visiting Peter Pan Goes Wrong last year he declared grandly, “If Mischief Theatre don’t revive this every Christmas then something really has gone wrong.”

Rather unusually someone must have been awake, for here it is, inflicting itself on the same theatre for the seasonal period. Same show, new cast and still as energetically mad as a President-elect hairdo. Phew.

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 – Let the Right One In, Apollo Theatre

A few things you may not know about Let the Right One In.

Let the Right One In is not a UKIP immigration policy.

Nor is Let the Right One Nigel Farage’s new campaign slogan. Well, not yet anyway.

Phil can’t think of the title, Let the Right One without humming “The Hokey Cokey”.

The 2013 Whingie Awards – the very worst and the not so bad

A bit late getting around to this. But since it’s probably your first day back at work, let’s face it you’re not really intending to do any real work are you? Isn’t that why you’re here?

Anyhoo, a year ago we speculated that 2013 might be an unlucky year for some.

The unfortunate roof collapse at the Apollo Theatre proved this both true and untrue. Unlucky for anyone involved, but lucky in the sense that it could easily have been so much worse.

When Phil discussed the incident with his sister they realised they’d been to the Apollo together only once, ironically to the musical Up On the Roof.

But, as Phil watched events unfold on BBC News that night, there was a rather flattering moment for London Theatre audiences. Returning to the studio, after watching people describe what they’d seen inside the Apollo, the news anchor remarked that he’d never heard such articulate eyewitness reports before.

Unlucky for theatre critics too as they were picked off one by one. Who wasn’t reminded of the Vincent Price film Theatre of Blood? It seemed newspapers either didn’t want arts critics any more, or didn’t want the one they already had. And in one case, apparently found the spurious excuse of pants-dropping for dropping their scribe.

But it seems the critics are finding other outlets. The Telegraph’s Tim Walker is expanding on his appearance in Top Hat to play God in Spamalot. How long before we get to see Libby Purves’ Grizabella the glamour theatreCat, Mark Shenton disrobing in Hair or theatregoers saying “Hello” to Tim Walker’s Dolly! ?

It was also the year Andrew decided he didn’t want to write for the Whingers anymore. For the record, he went of his own accord, quashing the scurrilous rumours that Phil staged a coup after finding a rather inappropriate image of Andrew in his jim jams on the internet.

So without further ado, here are Phil’s choices for the year, just so he can use the word ‘actress’ again and not group everyone together as ‘actors’…

Review – Blithe Spirit, Apollo Theatre

There’s nothing the Whingers like more than having the willies put up them.

With Ghost Stories under their belts and Ghost The Musical coming up in the outside lane the Whingers found themselves again taking stock of their relationship with the supernatural in the form of Noël Coward‘s Blithe Spirit.

And despite a cynical take on all things ectoplasmic Phil had a peculiar, nay spooky, experience at the Apollo Theatre. Only a few hours earlier he’d be musing not only about the last time he saw the play on stage (with “sock it to me!” Judy Carne as Elvira) but also about an old friend he’d lost touch with and hadn’t seen for many years. A dry, deeply cynical but solid fellow, definitely not prone to flights of fantasy, he had once told Phil a pretty convincing tale, witnessed by many others at the same moment, of seeing a ghost (a floating head if you please) in a Spanish monastery many years ago.* And there he was (the teller of the tale, not the ghost) standing in the bar at the interval of Monday’s preview, imbibing his own choice of spirits!

All very peculiar and unsettling. Call for Derek Acorah. Even better, call Shirley Ghostman!

Review – My Trip Down the Pink Carpet, Apollo Theatre

The Whingers tripped lightly down the pink carpet last year when we caught Leslie Jordan’s one man show just off The Broadway.

And since the show has been brought over pretty much in an identical format there’s not much to add that we didn’t already say and never let it be said that we make unnecessary work for ourselves.

Review – All My Sons, Apollo Theatre

Don’t see this as a review, think of it more as test to see just how hard the Whingers are.

Let us explain. At the opening night of All My Sons Charles Spencer found it “profoundly moving” and reported that “I even spotted a hardened fellow critic weeping”.

We know that he or she was not the only critic blubbing away that opening night – we bumped into another one emerging from the theatre daintily dabbing at his ducts with a Kleenex.

Perhaps Arthur Miller‘s play would work its magic and touch even the Whingers’ shrivelled hearts?

Well, we can’t exactly say we dissolved into tears when we found out they had sold out of programmes at the Apollo Theatre on Tuesday evening, but we were a little peeved.

Review – Debbie Reynolds: Alive and Fabulous, Apollo Theatre

Yes Debbie Reynolds. That Debbie Reynolds! Star of the best movie musical ever made, mother of Princess Leia (“That makes me a queen, too”) and the scene-stealing Grace’s mother in Will & Grace.

It would be easy to crack a few gags based on the title of her “concert” Debbie Reynolds: Alive and Fabulous at the Apollo Theatre but we are too late. There is no chance of making lame jokes about the fact that the 78 year old Singing in the Rain star is still alive as Ms Reynolds is way ahead of us. She constantly refers to it, even checking her own pulse at one point.

So definitely alive then. The big question is of course, is she fabulous and if so just how much?

Review – Carrie’s War, Apollo Theatre

It was with some dismay that the Whingers entered the Apollo Theatre auditorium yesterday afternoon to find it crawling with, well, school children.

They were already downhearted at having inadvertently elected to spend July’s seemingly sole sunny afternoon inside a theatre and under any other circumstances the lure of sunshine and 70%-off sales in the nicer stores of Regent Street would have had them ripping up their tickets without a second thought.

But they were at Carrie’s War at the invitation of the producer who had emailed the Whingers to ask: “Have you forgotten us? We produce a whole show, await your comments, but find you seem to have left us as yet unvisited?” By the end of the exchange the Whingers had eventually decided to invite themselves to the intriguing prospect of a Tuesday matinee (whoever heard of such a thing?) and poor Mr Producer was simply asking “Why won’t you let me have the last word?”.

And so the Whingers found themselves walking in to the Apollo feeling rather grand until they were bumped back to earth at the horror of finding themselves to be not only about the oldest people in the stalls, but seemingly be some decades. Deep breath.

Review – Three Days of Rain, Apollo Theatre

It was a very wet and somewhat bedraggled party of 10 that turned up at the Apollo Theatre for Richard Greenberg‘s appropriately titled Three Days of Rain last night.

After fighting through such a deluge you would think that nothing could have dampened them or their spirits further. But you would be wrong.

Because before one gets to the promised Three Days of Rain (and excitingly there is actually rain on stage) one must endure Three Quarters of an Hour of Exposition.

Review – Well, Apollo Theatre

With everyone in New Year mode, many thinking about their health and their body (not that anyone is thinking about Andrew’s body) it seemed appropriate that the Whingers’ first outing of 09 should be to Lisa Kron‘s play Well at the Apollo Theatre.

Well, actually Andrew had no idea why the Whingers went to see this. He had a vague recollection that they had concluded quite some time ago – possibly before it had even been written – that it was going to be awful* and that the Whingers were definitely going to give it a wider berth.

Their presence at the Apollo on Monday evening can only be put down to Phil’s determination to see “international screen icon” Sarah Miles on stage. Anyway…