Some mopping up – Hot Tin/ Slaves of Solitude / Young Marx

For those kind folk (that should probably read as singular rather than plural) who have been interested enough to ask where Phil’s been, here lies the answer. Hip replacement don’t you know, beating Patti LuPone to the crutches by a matter of weeks. He feels Patti’s pain. And he’s just beginning to dip the toe on the end of his newly bionic leg back into the world of theatre that doesn’t come with a surgeon and anaesthetist.

Review – Wild, Hampstead Theatre

Mike Bartlett‘s King Charles III and his telly thingy Doctor Foster amused us so much we’d almost forgotten just how much we also loved his Cock.

Now, in Wild, he concentrates on whistleblower Edward Snowden, who leaked information of US mass surveillance programmes. He’s portrayed here as Andrew (Jack Farthing doing not unreasonable doppelgänger work) who we encounter awaiting an uncertain future holed up in a characterless Moscow hotel room (design Miriam Buether) where he’s visited by two enigmatic people, a man and a woman both claiming to be called “George”. Can he trust them? Are they here to help him, kill him, or just tease the hell out of him?

Review – Sunny Afternoon, Hampstead Theatre

” It’s not about the words. It’s about the atmosphere” says Ray Davies (John Dagleish) towards the end of the new Kinks’ musical. How apt.

By the finale, that atmosphere was something akin to a party. A party of people jiggling around (but not like their dads at discos – for this audience was largely too elderly to have parents still alive), in the form of a stage-managed standing dancing ovation. Sunny Afternoon is looking to the West End. Not very rock and roll. It ends up wanting to be Mamma Mia.

Review – Longing, Hampstead Theatre

Choosing a title for your play must be a bit like negotiating a minefield. It’s a wonder Princess Diana never got involved.

Unless you’re Ernie Wise or Alan Ayckbourn you’ve probably spent months, possibly years, crafting, polishing and honing it. And surely then dithering over a name by which it will be known for perpetuity.

A very good play with an iffy title may, possibly, not matter too much. But a bad play with the wrong moniker can give critics a field day.

Review – The Judas Kiss, Duke of York’s Theatre

Two weeks into a new year and our first trip to the theatre. You thought we’d given it up for 2013 didn’t you?

We’ve given other things up, well at least Andrew has. He’s having his now-customary January-off-the-sauce detox. Phil has gone the other way. He’s been playing the new Jeremy Piven drinking game which involves taking a swig of alcohol every time Piven’s titular Mr Selfridge gives one of his many signature toothy grins and raises both arms in the air. It’s quite intoxicating and not recommended on an empty stomach.

So with two theatrical experiences to get through in one evening* Phil went with Andrew’s flow and stayed dry too. In normal Whingering circumstances they’d have felt the spirit and spirits of Oscar Wilde in themselves. In David Hare‘s The Judas Kiss Wilde – however reduced his circumstances – never seems to be short of alcohol. It was a cruel irony for for a cold sober January evening.

Review – The Last of the Duchess, Hampstead Theatre

If you are disposed to think about the Duchess of Windsor, you might think about the abdication, those years in exile in France and the Queen Mum’s froideur towards her.

Then again you might be of a mind to muse on her supposed oral dexterity and question those allegations given her propensity for sporting pearl necklaces.

But then doubting different versions of events is key to the tale presented by playwright Nicholas Wright.

Review – No Naughty Bits, Hampstead Theatre

In which one of the Whingers boasts of a personal involvement in editing one of the Python’s work. But we’ll come back to that in due course.*

Steve Thompson‘s (Doctor Who, Sherlock) play No Naughty Bits has an intriguing premise: for the first US national broadcast of Monty Python’s Flying Circus in 1975 the network edited out the ruder elements for the American market. Michael Palin was coaxed into flying to New York with Terry Gilliam to persuade ABC to reinstate the cuts. When negotiations failed they ended up making their case to a Federal Court judge.

Review – The Fastest Clock in the Universe, Hampstead Theatre

Dear Andrew,

It’s been a while since I’ve felt moved to write, but I know you need something to lift you out of your grump.

I know you feel unfairly robbed of the Nobel Peace Prize despite your exhaustive efforts in the Middle East, but the good news is the Whingers are in line for an Olivier Award for the play we’re yet to write, so thanks for displaying surprising largesse and unclipping my lead for a rare solo visit to the theatre.

Can it really be that long since you allowed me out alone?  The event seems to come round faster than Christmas or our interval exits from the Cottesloe, so appropriately my trip was to the Hampstead Theatre‘s revival of Philip Ridley‘s The Fastest Clock in the Universe.

Review – Alphabetical Order by Michael Frayn, Hampstead Theatre

Feet were fast becoming a running theme for the Whingers as they staggered to the Hampstead Theatre on Monday evening.

Phil was staggering because he was still recovering from Saturday’s Third Annual West End Whingers party.

Andrew’s gait, meanwhile, was even less gainly than usual having come hot foot cold foot from a rather nasty experience at the podiatrist – something about Andrew being cryogenically frozen, but as usual Phil wasn’t really listening.

Having suffered such adverse reactions to Michael Frayn‘s Afterlife last year the main reason the Whingers had booked to see this revival of his 1975 hit Alphabetical Order was because Annette Badland was in the cast.

But just days before opening poor Ms Badland was forced to pull out having broken her foot apparently falling off a ladder (see the theme developing?) in her garden.

Review – Private Lives, Hampstead Theatre

The Whingers are très farouche when it comes to their private lives.

In Andrew’s case this is because he has no life to speak of.

In Phil’s case it’s because he lives in a complete fantasy world.

Yet although their lives are so dramatically different it is often only a stalls seat armrest that separates them (unless – as is often the case – they are reduced to sitting in the cheap seats in the front few rows of the Olivier or Lyttelton theatres where armrests are just a dream).

Yet watching Amanda and Elyot in Noël Peirce Coward‘s Private Lives constantly putting each other down and bickering in the most childish manner resonated for some reason.