Review – By Jeeves, Landor Theatre

Some people can be very kind.

When Phil announced to anyone who would listen at the Sunday matinée preview of By Jeeves at the Landor Theatre that he’d seen the original production, the overly generous and perhaps slightly naïve response was “That must be fifteen years ago!”

What of course Phil meant was the pre-London, Bristol Hippodrome tryout of Jeeves (as it was called in those long gone days back when Colin Firth was probably still on the throne).

If the Whingers had been together (in the co-dependent theatregoers sense) then its doubtful they would have made it even to the interval. Early previews apparently ran at four and three-quarter hours. Phil remembers the performance he endured going well beyond three and a half hours. Phil’s family became prototype Whingers unanimously agreeing it wasn’t very good and way too long. If only Sir Trevor Nunn had been brought in to cut it down to size.

Sheared of most of its numbers (only three remain from the original) and reworked in 1996 as By Jeeves it’s now running at an easier to digest two and a half hours (including interval).

But sadly, it felt every minute of it.

Review – On the 20th Century, Union Theatre

“You must be really old then” was the not-really-astonished-enough reaction when Phil let slip that he saw the original London production of On The 20th Century.

To be fair, it was only way back in 1980, two years after its début on The Broadway. To the Whingers that makes it s a modern musical as distinct from something like Guys and Dolls which is an old musical although funnily enough that was also 32 years old when Phil first saw it.

Ah time! How it speeds up as you get older. The theory that it’s due to a year being a smaller percentage of your life as time passes makes perfect sense to Phil. He’s already decided to leave this year’s Christmas decorations up for 2011 as there seems little point taking them down.

And the senior (even from Phil’s perspective) gentleman sitting behind the Whingers at the Union Theatre who had seen the original Broadway production, clearly remembered it as though it was yesterday. He was singing along throughout the show. Whatever happened to class? Even age doesn’t guarantee it.

Review – All-Male Iolanthe, Union Theatre

Another month, another opportunity for Phil to give his “State Of The Union Toilets” address to anyone who will listen.

Review – The Invisible Man, Menier Chocolate Factory

Review – The Master Builder, Almeida

Call the Guinness Book of Records! Call Norris McWhirter! Call Roy Castle! Loudly!

Sometimes you wonder about a title of a play and think, how did they come up with that? Sometimes you find yourself waiting for the title  to appear. But there is no waiting or wondering here. Not in Ibsen‘s The Master Builder at the Almeida.

It must surely hold the record for the number of times the title of the play is name checked in the piece itself. It boasts its own redundant form of product placement.

Review – Bells Are Ringing, Union Theatre

The art of whinging has been handed down through generations of Phil’s family courtesy of a matrilineage that, needless to say, ends abruptly and somewhat anti-climatically with Phil.

His mother, for example, never fails to moan on being put through to a call-centre, complaining she can’t understand what the people with “accents” are saying. Bells Are Ringing might just be the show for her.

Review – The Drowsy Chaperone, Upstairs at the Gatehouse

Last Sunday afternoon’s trip to Highgate to see The Drowsy Chaperone turned out to be that rare thing: a truly life-changing experience. For the Whingers made the startling discovery that Sunday lunch at The Gatehouse is just £6.99 (your choice of beef, lamb, chicken, pork or vegetarian) including a glass of wine. Sundays will never be the same again.

This put them in a very good place indeed, their stomachs, their moods and their pockets all feeling pleasingly attended to. Nothing but nothing would be able to prick their bubbles of contentment. Although Upstairs at the Gatehouse certainly had a bash.

A postcard from Edinburgh

Dear Phil

I see that your new sideline selling jokes to postcard manufacturers has taken off. I recognised the work as yours instantly. Very amusing.

Anyway, as it happens you were right to turn down my suggestion that we get away from it all for a few days. I arrived in Edinburgh to find that they are running an entire festival of fringe for the whole of August.

Review – Lingua Franca, Finborough Theatre

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?

Review – The Duchess of Malfi, Punchdrunk/ENO

“It’s just more of the same, really,” lamented Andrew, finally able to relax a bit and gather his thoughts now that the Whingers and party had located the hidden bar.

“It’s less of the same,” retorted Kat, pithily, which is exactly what the Whingers would have said had they thought of it.

Indeed. The Duchess of Malfi feels like Punchdrunk spread somewhat thin, despite the addition of an orchestra. The venue feels larger (three stories of an unoccupied office in Gallions Reach, Beckton) but there seem to be  fewer actors and less going on.

Mind you, this time they’ve really upped their game when it comes to the futility involved in being an audience member.

Review – Not By Bread Alone, Arts Depot

Andrew maintains Phil makes little sense anyway so there’s not much in the way of sense to be deprived of.

But the chance to see eleven deaf-blind actors telling eleven stories and baking bread in a performance that has been two years in the making seemed intriguing.

And since Andrew was at home, er, baking bread (Yes, really! In a breakmaker! How suburban!) and unwilling to face the long, cold trail to The Arts Depot, Phil was despatched solo.

Oh, and Phil’s long-gestating “Food-On-Stage” thesis had been gathering dust on the same shelf as his Petite Typewriter for too long of late. How could he resist?

Review – Assassins, Union Theatre

One of the troubles with longevity is a tendency towards repeating oneself. Ask Phil. And the same applies in blogging.

After four years the Whingers are now at that stage where shows are coming round again. What to do? Must we really find new gags every time someone revives something we’ve already seen? That’s going to be a challenge as we only have about six gags which are cunningly recycled.

Anyway, we did all the assassination gags when it was done at the Landor two and a half years ago.

And now (to celebrate the 80th birthday of yadda yadda yadda) Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins is revived at the Union Theatre under the direction of Michael Strassen who scored such a critical hit with his production of Sondheim’s Company at the Union a year ago.

Could lightning possibly strike twice?

Review – Knickerbocker Glories, Union Theatre

In which the Whingers engage with political theatre! Well, Andrew does. Phil finds today’s politics rather confusing and hard to keep up with. Indeed, last week he had to sit down and take a moment to compose himself when Andrew inadvertently let slip that the Corn Laws had been repealed.

Andrew, on the other hand, has a very keen interest in the issues of the day and is always up for a spirited debate on the decriminalisation of unnatural practices and whether or not women should have the vote, his view on the latter being “On balance, yes, probably.”

Miniaturists 24, Arcola Theatre

There are few things theatrical which will draw the Whingers into the theatre on a weekend, still fewer on a summer’s day as sunny as Sunday’s was, and practically none at all if it also means getting on a bus to Dalston.

It was also Phil’s birthday and despite Andrew’s  bullying tactics to get him to attend made Phil even more determined to celebrate it in a manner of his own choosing. But then again, he has had far too many birthdays already, the novelty long since wore off and he agreed to sit in the gloom until the Arcola‘s metaphorical final curtain.

Review – Calamity Jane, Upstairs at the Gatehouse

Apparently audiences are staying away from theatres almost en masse at the moment, preferring instead to sit in front of big screens, biting their manly nails in collective frustration and leaking testosterone all over the shop.

So the Whingers decided it was high time they put their feminine sides on the back burner and explore their combined powers of machismo with a trip to Upstairs at the Gatehouse to see that apperceptive dissection of gender roles and sexual identity: Calamity Jane.