Review – The Boy Friend, Menier Chocolate Factory

If you’re looking for a joyously silly, consciously dated piece of fluff of a musical with instantly hummable tunes with a plot flimsier than an election promise then this might just be the show you’ve been looking for.

The Boy Friend is about as far from Dear Evan Hansen as you can possibly get (chorus boys’ DEH striped T shirts aside).

Sandy Wilson produced the music, lyrics and book for this 1953 show, a pastiche of 1920’s musicals apparently, although as the show is in its seventh decade now it’s easy to miss that it was a spoof. It is so gloriously un-PC that even the colour blind casting of Amara Okereke as Polly Browne is sometimes turned on its head by a script that even seems to send that up.

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 – Anyone Can Whistle, Jermyn Street Theatre

It seems a curious choice to celebrate Stephen Sondheim‘s 8oth birthday with a Broadway show that lasted for just nine regular performances. That’s probably fewer than Too Close to the Sun (if we could be bothered to check) but if anyone wants to revive that to celebrate the Whingers’ 80th anniversary we will happily hobble along and join in the fun.

But Anyone Can Whistle is rarely revived, so why not? Why not?

Review: Two Birds And A Bloke, Pizza On The Park

The  Whingers are rarely offered owt fer nowt. But when it happens they are scrupulous about declaring their freebies.

Mind you, They have never had the luxury of having their swimming pools or moats freshened for nothing. Nor have they ever claimed for their ratcatchers or helipads. They guarantee that all maintenance of their drawbridges has come directly from their own pockets. They can’t even recall ever having owned (let alone sat on) a glittery loo seat although they may have occupied the occasional pouffe. But they would definitely sit in the stalls and chomp through their Maltesers at the taxpayers expense – given half a chance.

And we’re told we produce enough manure as it is without needing more of it for free.

So anyway it was a rare treat when the surely misguided people behind Jeff Harnar’s American Songbook in London invited the Whingers to see Two Birds And A Bloke at Pizza on the Park for free, gratis, like critics. Mind you, we paid for our own pizza and wine so we might as well have paid top whack for Priscilla.

Our dreams of “special guest” status were quickly punctured when we found ourselves placed at a table at the back. Andrew did some half-hearted moaning about not being able to see very well but it turned out to be this table or one behind a big plant. It turned out to be something of a blessing.