Review – Mojo, Harold Pinter Theatre

Phil’s first trip to the theatre since his return from what he likes to call the Orient.

Always one to worry about the potential hazards of exotic travel, he hadn’t researched things enough to discover there would be dangerous centipedes or bees, let alone that his chief destination would be positioned perilously on on the Ring of Fire. It was here he experienced his first earthquake, which arrived with a star rating of 6.6 apparently, though some critics downgraded it to 6.3, but it was still enough to discombobulate him slightly, though not as much as the giant inflatable duck which, as a result, exploded in Taiwan’s Kaohsiung harbour.

But theatre gave Phil an excuse to catch up with Andrew and bore him with his experiences of the wobbles, both from his vertigo at the top of some of the world’s tallest buildings and seismic. “Did you see any theatre?” asked Andrew. When Phil explained that Phantom of the Opera was playing in Shanghai (his last stop on the trip) there seemed to be no need to expand on the conversation.

Review – Moonlight, Donmar

Sorry. We’ve only just troubled you with some of the differences between the Whinger but here’s another one, as though you cared.

Some years back Andrew swore that he would never permit Harold Pinter to darken his theatregoing door again.

Phil, on the other hand, had been put off Pinter when he studied The Caretaker at school (Andrew expresses surprise at this, surely a more contemporary playwright for Phil would have been, say, Congreve?) but was understandably converted by seeing Dora Bryan in a NT production of The Birthday Party many, many moons ago.

Andrew should have known better. But even Phil really should have known to draw the line at the Donmar’s Moonlight, having yawned through the original, rather starry (Ian Holm, Anna Massey, Douglas Hodge, Michael Sheen, Claire Skinner, Edward de Souza) production at the Almeida in 1993.

But whether the result of a gluttony for punishment or optimism wrestling experience to the floor and sitting on its chest, the Whingers gamely trotted off to the Donmar to – it turns out – stick proverbial pins in their eyes yet again.