Review – Putting It Together, St James Theatre

Brave to stage the London premiere of Putting It Together just after Christmas when telly’s just served countless cobbled together compilation shows, reviews of the year and list shows. And, of course, we hold our hands up, the Whinger’s last post was listing considerably too.

Do we need another Sondheim compilation show? What could possibly be new after Side by Side by Sondheim or Sondheim on Sondheim? Perhaps in the not-too-distant future some bright spark will put together a compilation show of Sondheim compilation shows.

Review – Singin’ in the Rain, Palace Theatre

One tampers with Singin’ in the Rain at one’s peril.

On achieving a certain maturity most sensible people (and the Whingers) come to accept that it is arguably the greatest movie musical ever made. So this theatrical version – like any other – sploshes down on the stage of the Palace Theatre from Chichester with an awful lot of soggy baggage.

And strangely enough it was a piece of baggage (a small valise to be specific) that proved the turning point in the Whingers’ evening.

Review – Hello, Dolly! at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre

With the predicted barbecue summer on and off faster than a Hemingway musical it looked as if the Whingers’ 2009 visit to Regent’s Park might end up as a reprise of last year’s somewhat waterlogged outing.

But with the sudden return of good weather over the weekend the Whingers had been optimistically talking again of sizzling their sausages. It seemed that the plastic ponchos which stood them in such good stead at last year’s delightful Gigi might remain packed away and that they would be able to appreciate Jerry Herman‘s Hello, Dolly! by putting on their sunny day clothes.

But Andrew – thrilled by the meticulous punctuation of the title – had been impatiently tapping his barometer and keeping a beady eye on the forecast and in his practised Cassandra voice was warning that  things weren’t looking too good for Dolly‘s press night (Yes, press night! How grand is that? See what you can achieve when one of you dons a prosthetic Ian Shuttleworth suit and the other simply claims to be new boy Henry Hitchings? The people at the press desk didn’t suspect a thing).

But we digress.