Review – The Hamilton Experience, Victoria Palace

So what’s Hamilton about?

It’s about finger-wagging bossiness and treating audiences as a slight inconvenience. The theatrical equivalent of restaurants which are happy to profit from big group bookings but can’t cope unless you choose from the menu in advance.

It’s about telling their audience to get to the theatre an hour before the performance and telling them not to try and enter the theatre until their full party has arrived. WTF? We hadn’t been this irritated since we heard our last “See it. Say it. Sorted” tube announcement (let’s not even start on those voiced by children).

It’s about telling us to bring “photographic ID” (according to Ticketmaster’s missives) or “government issued photo ID” (according to the Hamilton website) – so which is it to be? Phil, who confused the government with TFL was only allowed to enter by one of the Victoria Palace wardens as he “looked honest” (note to ticket touts, model yourselves on Phil). Andrew was taking no chances; fearing he might be mistaken for a tout and not allowed to finger the ticket he forked out for a year ago (despite Phil having dealt with the traumas of booking) he promised to turn up with his passport, a utility bill and a letter signed by two Justices of the Peace.

Review – Betty Blue Eyes, Novello Theatre

You may wonder, should you luxuriate in having too much time on your hands and nothing better to do with it, what the Whingers have in common.

Andrew tries manfully to do his bit to save the planet. Phil finds it a bit of a chore but does find the recycling bin a useful over-flow receptacle for his umpteen empty wine bottles.

Andrew is vegetarian. Phil regards a bacon sandwich as the perfect hangover cure believing Andrew would cope better if he just got some meat inside him.

There you are, very little congruity between the Whingers really. Andrew would of course be on the side of the pig, Betty Blue Eyes, while Phil would be imagining the smell of bacon sizzling over his ring.

Review – Hair, Gielgud Theatre

The Whingers finally made their stage debuts! Dancing in a musical! Wearing flowers in their hair! Tripping! (Over the carpet)

And we can truthfully tell you: we were utterly fabulous! And you missed it.

Yes, you read that correctly. The Gielgud Theatre London. Not The Al Hirschfeld Theatre on The Broadway where Hair is still playing. And there was yet another first. This is the full original cast brought over from the Broadway revival and yes, we’re still here in New York. Got that? Confused? We are.

And you know what? It’s so hot on a West End stage we were tempted to strip (they’ve even installed extra generators in the street for some reason). Not that the heat stopped us gyrating wildly, giving our all like the troupers we are. We won’t need understudies. You won’t find a slip in your programme or hear groans from the audience as an announcement just before the curtain rises intones “Due to their indisposition The Whingers will not be appearing”. We’ll do 8 shows a week quite happily. And we promise to keep our clothes on. Yes, we were first on stage as the cast invited the audience to join them on stage at the end of the show (about 200 apparently counted by ushers with clickers, it’s a health and safety thing) and we were the last off. They even extended the curtain call at last Saturday night’s preview so impressive were our performances. See, we told you we were fabulous.