Review – The Mousetrap, St Martin’s Theatre

We know! The Mousetrap!

Why? Because it’s there. Because it was about time. Because Phil and an awful lot of other people had never actually seen it despite being in its 58th year (As is Phil. Or thereabouts. Who’s counting?).

And because a group offer unexpectedly became available (see footnote 1). The Whingers proposed a group outing and the take-up was astronomic. So 18 celestial people (including apparently respectable theatre commentators such as  him and  him and her and her and a consumptive her) met up in a sunny Seven Dials to tuck into Andrew’s celebratory mousetrap (actually a bag of Mini-Babybels for practical reasons) before traipsing round the corner for the show’s 23,972nd performance. Yes, more cheese, creaky cheese, from the  the Queen of Crime, the High Priestess of the Whodunit, Agatha Christie.

Review: Sunset Boulevard, Comedy Theatre

“You can’t write a musical about Sunset Boulevard,” Billy Wilder is said to have told Stephen Sondheim. “It has to be an opera. After all, it’s about a dethroned queen” (We’re not going to insult your intelligence with links to SB, BW or SS – you know what/who they are).

Sondheim got the message but if Andrew Lloyd Webber had any qualms he overcame them and – unhappily – another hit was born, Patti LuPone, Glenn Close, Betty Buckley, Petula Clark and Rita Moreno (ditto) being among the luminaries who have given their close-up, Mr De Mille.

Now, cards on the table. The Whingers have never been struck by Mr Lloyd Webber’s work and they tend to steer well-clear of sung-through musicals. They also believe that Sunset Boulevard is a classic film that no-one has any right to mess with (for heaven’s sake; at this rate they’ll be staging All About Eve next!) but they gallantly overcame all these prejudices and more in order to take a trip down Sunset Boulevard at the Comedy Theatre.