Review – The Children’s Hour, Comedy Theatre

Keira Knightley in (k)nightl(e)y, hot lesbian drama! Well, that’s pushing it a bit but you can understand why this revival of The Children’s Hour might be expected to attract a non-core West End audience.

Indeed, it’s strange to think that in a quasi-parallel universe there may, even now, be a queue at the Harold Comedy Theatre in which two similarly shabby but redder-blooded Whingers are even now standing in dirty macs (and anyway where did that convention come from? Surely not Columbo or Harold Wilson?), queuing shiftily to buy a ticket from the box office with their hats pushed down on their heads and their scarves pulled up around their ears, anxiously hoping not to be spotted by their wives or their colleagues.

Review – La Bête, Comedy Theatre

“The theatrical event of the year” is a phrase that’s rather bandied about willy-nilly these days.

Benedict Nightingale’s quote still lurks mockingly on the publicity for Paint Never Dries. Punters might be forgiven for thinking that it signalled a volte-face in Nightingale’s opinion after his less than flattering 2 star review. It didn’t. The quote actually originates from something he wrote long before he saw it.

But the Whingers can truthfully say that for them La Bête really does fall into the category of one of their most eagerly anticipated theatrical excursions of the year, despite it being written in verse.

Yes verse! You would think that in a post-Fram, post-Misanthrope world, people would have stopped putting on verse plays and moreover that the Whingers would have stopped going to them.

Have their heads been turned by dipping their poetic toes into the Clerihewcular cosmos?

Review – The Misanthrope with Keira Knightley, Comedy Theatre

“Why are we doing this?” grumped Andrew, plaintively.

“Who is she?” he continued, wailing.

Phil explained patiently: “She was in those pirate films, Bend it Like Beckham and that fim you saw with James McAvoy in a vest.”

Well, James McAvoy always gets to wear a vest in every film so that didn’t narrow it down and Andrew wasn’t convinced that this “Keira Knightley” was someone he needed to see.

But it seems the rest of the world does. People are flocking to the Comedy Theatre in droves. Let’s face it, they weren’t there because of their need to see The Misanthrope or their love of Molière.

Review – Too Close To The Sun, Comedy Theatre

Some people will toss themselves off a canal bank to save a drowning child (the Whingers are just tossers). Some will rush into a burning building to save a baby (the Whingers will rush to the bar or from a theatre at the interval). Other selfless people might be moved donate an organ (the Whingers once sponsored a piano key).

But some acts of indomitable pluck go far beyond the call of what can decently be expected of a human being or even an actor. Such acts of valour deserve recognition, celebration and – in the case of people from the north presumably – the doffing of caps.

So before the year is even close to being over the West End Whingers can award their “2009 award for an outstanding display of spunk” to the cast of the Ernest Hemingway musical Too Close To The Sun.

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.