Review – Emperor and Galilean, National Theatre

You’re a casting director. You’ve got Hitler’s favourite play sitting on your desk. Who you gonna call? Ian McDiarmid!

Review – The Prince of Homburg, Donmar Warehouse

Like The Railway Children, which is currently flaunting its loco at Waterloo station, Heinrich von Kleist‘s The Prince of Homburg comes with its own Unique Selling Point having had conferred upon it the somewhat loco accolade: “Hitler’s favourite play”.

Yes, the Whingers were obviously never quite going to be able to overlook such an epithet and as soon as the Donmar announcement was made the Whingers were straight on the phone for tickets.

After all, it’s only a few months since they saw Stalin’s favourite play and their theatre-going activities have been given a new impetus by the desire to tick off the favourite plays of all of the 20th Century’s top dictators (and their wives). The Whingers are given to understand that Elena Ceauşescu* adored The Prisoner of Second Avenue (and was the only person on the planet to find it the slightest bit amusing) so it was worth sitting through that after all. Now we are willing someone – anyone –  to revive Idi Amin’s favourite musical, No, No Nanette.

Review – Be Near Me, Donmar Warehouse

Dear Phil

I hope you are having a nice time at your mother’s.

Strange that you should have to go and see her on the very weekend that I had tickets for  Be Near Me at the Donmar Warehouse. Sometimes I think  you don’t really like the theatre at all.

Or had someone perhaps tipped you off as to the fact that nothing happens in the entire first act (almost) of this two and a half hour play adapted by Ian McDiarmid from the novel by Andrew O’Hagan.

Review – Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, Gielgud Theatre

Do the Whingers exist?

Or are they merely characters created by their own writings?*

And is it inappropriate to use the word “merely”?

Without their incoherent ramblings would the characters of Phil and Andrew exist outside these pages?

Is it only you (yes, we mean you) reading these very words at this very moment that gives the Whingers their existence?