Review – Into the Woods, Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre

There are some marriages made in heaven. Not that of the Whingers, of course. Their uneasy, warped version of wedlock is one parboiled over the flames of hell, yet still half-baked.

But whoever came up with the idea of staging Into the Woods in the gloriously seemly setting that is the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre should be appropriately ennobled. The biggest question is: why has it taken them so long?

With memories of previous years’ Hello Dolly! and Gigi still transforming the Whingers’ usual grimacing countenances into beaming smiles (despite the downpours of rain encountered on both occasions) expectations were raised to an unreasonably imprudent level.

Review – Too Close To The Sun, Comedy Theatre

Some people will toss themselves off a canal bank to save a drowning child (the Whingers are just tossers). Some will rush into a burning building to save a baby (the Whingers will rush to the bar or from a theatre at the interval). Other selfless people might be moved donate an organ (the Whingers once sponsored a piano key).

But some acts of indomitable pluck go far beyond the call of what can decently be expected of a human being or even an actor. Such acts of valour deserve recognition, celebration and – in the case of people from the north presumably – the doffing of caps.

So before the year is even close to being over the West End Whingers can award their “2009 award for an outstanding display of spunk” to the cast of the Ernest Hemingway musical Too Close To The Sun.