Review – The Pirates of Penzance, Wilton’s Music Hall

The Whingers make no secret of the fact that they’re not big fans of Gilbert and Sullivan, although to be fair they have very little experience of them.

Phil’s only G&S outing was to the Broadway transfer of The Pirates of Penzance many years ago at Drury Lane but he loved that so much he saw it twice.

Andrew once left The Mikado at the Coliseum at the interval (this is long before the Whingers started the now-commonplace trend of cutting one’s theatrical losses) but was first introduced to G&S as a youngster. His maternal grandparents owned a radiogram but curiously only about 10 LPs, nine of which seemed to be G&S and which he struggled boyfully to employ as entertainment on dull Worcestershire afternoon visits but without success. Luckily the tenth LP was The Sound of Music which as a result he knows off by heart and back to front much to the distress of many karaoke punters over the intervening years.

Anyway, Sasha Regan‘s All Male Pirates of Penzance which received the Best Off-West End Production (at The Union Theatre) at the WhatsOnStage Awards 2010 sounded an intriguing prospect. After much acclaim the show has berthed at the extraordinary Wilton’s Music Hall whose dilapidated state seems somehow to offer a natural home for the Whingers, yet strangely Phil had never been there before. But while he was quite excited, Andrew confessed to “slightly dreading” a return to that eccentric gramophone collection of his youth.

Review – Once Upon a Time at the Adelphi, Union Theatre

You know, sometimes it isn’t easy being a Whinger.

We do not complain.

But sometimes you find yourself in one of your favourite little theatres watching a group of enthusiastic young people giving it their all, belting out tunes, dancing their socks off and even acting from time to time and you just think, “Oh”.

Review – Silence! The Musical!, Above The Stag Theatre

Yes, even Phil’s Mother guessed that Silence! The Musical is based on the film Silence of the Lambs, even though she’s never seen it, is likely to see it, or even knows anything about it.

Whatever next Schindler! based on Schindler’s List?  Dawn! based on Dawn of the Dead? Raging! based on Raging Bull? Sadly these aren’t our ideas, but just some of the spoof posters for shows on the stairs as you climb Above The Stag to see Silence!, creating just the right mood for what you’re about to witness.

Review – The Whisky Taster, Bush Theatre

James Graham’s play at the Bush about a former History Boy with synæsthesia is very much orange – an orange somewhere between Jacobs cream crackers and Flymo. Or perhaps slightly more like a satsuma left over from Christmas 1967 in the first week of February but with the distinct taste of a recently brushed brick. There is the unmistakable aroma of a recently unfolded pacamac.

Graham’s dialogue resembles the leaf of an Antirrhinum but with less of the smell of EPNS cutlery. Kate O’Flynn is like Nesquik. There’s an amusing turn from Simon Merrells (who is in The Wolfman – how periwinkle is that?) which just IS a bottle of Liebfraumilch rolling along a caravan table on the Gower peninsula at Whitsun.

At two and a half hours it begins to feel like the sound of a Bel Cream Maker when brushed up against the tag of a Ladybird t-shirt from Woollies (the Telford branch). But nowithstanding, it’s got that distinctive salty sound one associates with an episode of  Oh, Brother! starring Derek Nimmo.

To summarise: it’s exactly like the feel of a Dinnefords bottle through a Findus crispy pancake.

Rating

The Whingers Awards 2009 – the very worst and the not so bad

With another year rapidly drawing to a close it is time for the Whingers to reflect and indulge themselves in a little more navel gazing – not our own navels, as that would be even duller than usual for you – but the innies and outies of the sometimes fluffy navels of London’s artistic directors, producers, players and theatres and award The Whingies to the most outstanding ones.

But first our own navels: 2009 has been a year of heady excitement for the Whingers. It was a year that saw them inadvertently whip up controversy and heated debate again and again and again.

It was also a year in which artistic differences reared their ugly heads threatening the very fabric of the West End Whingers, a tear in the polyester bed-sheet of their existence so delicate that a clumsily clipped toenail might have been all it took to rent it from headboard to toe straight down the middle.

The Whingers were courted by the British Broadcasting Company, libelled as “muckrakers” in the National Press, lampooned in song and Phil had his pithiest aphorism to date quoted (yet mainly without attribution) by national critics. There was an evening of confusion in which Phil was mistaken for Michael Grandage and the Whingers finally received an award for their artistic endeavours.

And we finally got the opportunity to choose between the Merlot and the Marlowe.

So, without further do, here are the results of the Kentish Town and Vauxhall juries:

Review – Jiggery Pokery, Battersea Arts Centre

Here’s a brain teaser for you: WEW favourite and Kneehigh regular Amanda Lawrence plays comedy legend Charles Hawtrey (and about 50 other roles besides) in an 80 minute one-woman show. Why on earth would Phil not be there?

Could it be something to do with that old, inconvenient art-holding-a-mirror-up-to-life thing? What could it be that strikes fear into Phil in the true story story of a sad has-been who spends his days pickled in gin, is despised by his neighbours for his drunken foul language, insists on writing cheques to pay for his cab fares while making drunken passes at the cabby and is barred from every public house in the area?

It doesn’t do to dwell on such questions so we shall move swiftly on.

Faithless director slips into star’s stilettos

News reaches the Whingers of a fabulous piece of emergency casting.

Carola Stewart, the leading lady in Faithless Bitches currently playing at the Courtyard Theatre in Hoxton, has departed the show. According to a press release the pressure of the role was having a detrimental effect on her health.

Stepping into the breach is co-author and director Harold Finley who yesterday took over the role of Monique Masters and will continue to do so through to the end of the run.

This is clearly above and beyond the call of duty and think the likes of Michael Grandage and Nicholas Hytner should take a leaf out of Mister Finley’s book and take their directorial responsibilities a little more seriously in the future.

Separated at birth?: Carola Stewart (left) and Harold Finley (right)

Review – A Man Of No Importance, Union Theatre

Phil couldn’t make this one. He claimed he was off to a thanksgiving dinner but it was Andrew who was most thankful.

For Phil may have found himself on the horns of a terrible dilemma here. On the one hand he would have been thrilled with the food on stage: a spaghetti meal and a dance number involving strings of sausages but on the other hand there was a park bench in Act II. And even though this was technically a cemetery bench it was the kind of outdoor furniture which generally raises his hackles.

Review – Terror 2009, Southwark Playhouse

There are quite a few things that really terrify the Whingers.

Phil is famously scared of heights, latterly and powerfully illustrated in Petra, Jordan (see illustration to the right) where he had to be physically prised off a rock on a particularly vertiginous ledge by not only a Jordanian guide but by two bemused Bedouin women and a very discombobulated Andrew.

But Andrew too can readily succumb to the jitters, being prone to an attack of the vapours when ever anyone says “approximate running time”, “unreserved seating”, “theatre-in-the-round”, “Pinter revival” or “last orders”.

So given the everyday anxieties of life as a Whinger, stories of theatregoers running from the theatre during performances of Terror 2009, Theatre of Horror and Grand Guignol at the Southwark Playhouse were of relatively little concern.

Review – Bette Bourne and Mark Ravenhill: A Life in Three Acts, Soho Theatre

Since the unexpected but most welcome song dedicated* to them in the Menier’s Forbidden Broadway, the Whingers have become impossibly grand. They’ve set their sights even higher and expect to see themselves portrayed on stage ere long.

But who would play them? Cross-gender casting wouldn’t bother them at all and Phil would be more than happy to see the wonderful Fenella Fielding tackling his sophisticated airs.

But who could possibly do justice to Andrew? Who could best encapsulate his physical attributes? Miriam Margolyes? Bonnie Langford? Jeanette Krankie?

Review – The Druid’s Rest, Finborough Theatre

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!

Review – Cloud Nine, Union Theatre

Why?

Anyone with little more than a CSE (explanatory note to the youth of today: that’s what you would know as an A Grade A Level) knowledge of the West End Whingers’ predilections and prejudices will know that the duo take a very dim view indeed of playwright  Caryl Churchill.

This stance is based almost entirely on having endured Drunk Enough To Say I Love You…? at the Royal Court three years ago.

So why would the Whingers elect to visit Fandango‘s production of Cloud Nine at the Union Theatre? Why?

Review – State Fair, Finborough Theatre

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.

Review: Call Me Madam, Upstairs at the Gatehouse

Phil suffers from vertigo (and everyone around him suffers too) so the Whingers had never before ventured Upstairs at the Gatehouse whose unique selling proposition is that it is “officially London’s top theatre – we’re 446ft above sea level!”.

But ripping off their oxygen masks they were heartened to see that this was actually very much their kind of venue – a sign on the auditorium’s door (see below) which invited, nay almost ordered them to “Drink as much as you like”.

So from grumbling about the Gatehouse’s unreserved seating policy and it’s stupid  ticket-reservation-by-answerphone system (“we will only call you back if there is a problem”) their moods shifted instantly to exactly the right frame of mind to enjoy a Sunday matinée performance of Irving Berlin’s Call Me Madam.

Review – Naked Boys Singing!, King’s Head Theatre

Six young actors and dancers successfully audition for a part in a nude review. It’s A Chorus Line with knobs on.