Andrew is on sabbatical but Phil is soldiering on to help you decide between the Merlot and the Marlowe and generally putting London's West End theatre to rights
Plays with similar themes seem to becoming a bit of a habit with us.
Following on from last week’s Once in a Lifetime which took a pop at playwrights struggling to make sense of being holed up in Hollywood studio basements comes Rodney Ackland‘s possibly semi-autobiographical not-seen-in-London-for-over-eighty-years After October. Read the rest of this entry »
Things were not shaping up too well in 2015.
First Phil was going to hand out the much coveted Whingie Awards for 2014, then on reflection realised his short list was very short indeed (or he was just feeling too lazy). So apologies to Imelda Staunton, Tim Pigott-Smith, King Charles III, My Night With Reg, Forbidden Broadway and Assassins. You’d all have featured somewhere, but just think how much more coveted our gongs will be if it isn’t an annual event.
Then on Monday Phil turned up for Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown-The Musical only to be told it was cancelled due to the indisposition of 3 of the leads. Phil adopted on a glass half-full air saying “At least we can go home and watch Broadchurch” at which point two other glass half-full patrons turned round interjecting “That’s exactly what we said too”. Anyhoo, the Playhouse staff were so nice and apologetic about it Phil didn’t have the heart to tell them it wasn’t like the days of Ethel Merman (who never missed a show) as they were all far to young to know who the hell he was talking about it.
The next day, Phil was due to interview Rob Marshall and Marc Platt, director and producer respectively of Into the Woods, but this was cancelled too. Phil had previously puffed himself up at this inexplicable invitation and prepared, with due diligence, his list of probing questions, “Did they know that James Corden was probably only in the film due to the Whingers, since we were the first to rave about him in One Man, Two Guvnors, leading to its West End and Broadway transfers, Corden’s Tony Award and his international recognition?” and “Why wasn’t Meryl Streep given a big prosthetic hooter for her witch?” and “How much wine was downed at the film’s wrap party?” Sadly we will never know.
So what chance for Jerry Herman’s The Grand Tour? Andrew (who dragged himself up out of the house for this one) was anticipating a third cancellation. Read the rest of this entry »
The Whingers have been cunningly brushing up their linguistics of late. Not by choice, you understand. It’s just rubbing off.
Phil scraped a pass in his School Certificate exam which just about enabled him to cope with the basic French in The Railway Children. But Aspects of Love left both Whingers scratching their heads with entire scenes lost in translation.
If this really is the emerging theatrical trend of vingt-dix perhaps audiences should enrol in the titular Lingua Franca language school of Peter Nichols‘s new play which offers plenty of French, German and la bella lingua to get one’s tongue around. As long as one only wants to know how to say knife, fork and spoon.
Another reason for dropping in to see the school in action before it closes on 7th August is the disproportionately (to the size of the Finborough Theatre) starry cast. Chris New! Rula Lenska! Why can’t all fringe theatre be comme ça?
Yes, another trip to the fringe. We promise to break out of it soon.
Latest news on the poor, beleaguered Finborough Theatre: not only is there still no alcohol licence but there’s not even a bar any more. Drinks may be purchased at the nearby newsagent and brought in to the auditorium in plastic cups. There is still no running water in the gents. The auditorium remains tropically warm.
So it’s saying something that despite all this the Whingers had a thoroughly enjoyable evening when they visited last night to catch The Druid’s Rest by the “Welsh Noel Coward” Emlyn Williams.
And bits of it are in Welsh! Read the rest of this entry »
Our regular reader has noticed a singular lack of whinging in recent reviews.
Have the Whingers gone soft? That’s what they’re saying – softer than a butter cow in the Finborough theatre on a hot August evening.
The recent run of peculiarly enthusiastic ramblings (broken only by Too Close Too The Sun which in its own way provided weeks of entertainment and even a few household items acquired through an ebay auction of the props which will be treasured for years) suggest the Whingers may be suffering from some form of summer madness.
How wonderful then, for Phil at least, to find at last something to put him back in one of his spectacular grumps.
But first let’s set the scene and find out how he reached this state of peevishness. Read the rest of this entry »
Restaurant fails to pay rates – with hilarious consequences!
Don’t miss this this story of bailiffs attempting to confiscate Nichola McAuliffe’s knick knacks from the Finborough Theatre.
Margaret Beckett makes a guest appearance.
It is a little known fact among those who have yet to be granted admittance to the murky crevices of the Whingers’ inner circle (a geometrical unlikelihood, granted) that Phil is contractually obliged to address Andrew as “HRH”.
Behind Phil’s back, Andrew calls his whinging chum “The Duchess” or sometimes “that fat, Scottish cook” as Mrs Wallis Simpson aka the Duchess of Windsor would apparently refer to the Queen Mother.
So the Whingers felt very at home and sympathetic to Lena Farugia‘s neatly titled play about Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor: Untitled, now playing at the Finborough Theatre. Read the rest of this entry »
That Mark R****hill has a lot to answer for. Once he unleashed the title of S****ing and F***ing on the world there was no **ing back.
So now US playwright Joe DiP****o picks up the b**** with this take on Schnitzler’s La Ronde at the F**borough Theatre. Read the rest of this entry »
A West End Whinger 