Review – Loot, Park Theatre

We’ve been scratching our heads recently, not just each others, but our own.

When Andrew booked for this production of Joe Orton’s Loot (1965) it was because someone – we know not who –  promised that we needed to book early because it would sell out when an an all-star cast was announced.

So, we waited, and waited, and waited for names we knew and possibly loved to be announced. Nada. Names trickled out and not one we recognised, that was until Phil somehow remembered sitting next to Sinéad Matthews on the tube last year as she studied her Hedda Gabler script. Both Phil and Andrew are convinced they had read the announcement, yet we have no proof. We’ve trawled our emails but can find nothing. Did we both share the same dream one night? Spooky. Heck, our own entourage was more starry than this lot.

Review – What the Butler Saw, Vaudeville Theatre

Was it a cigar or a phallus?

Edna Welthorpe (Mrs) would not have enjoyed the post-show discussion following the Whingers’ visit to the Vaudeville Theatre to see a preview of What the Butler Saw for the Whingers found themselves mired in struggles to recall the ins and outs of Winston Churchill’s private member vis a vis the Lord Chamberlain.

Review: Prick Up Your Ears, Richmond Theatre (en route to the Comedy)

With their own diaries groaning and a deluge of theatrical openings looming the Whingers found the only way they could possibly fit everything promising in was to trek off to the Richmond Theatre to catch the appropriately monikered Simon Bent‘s stage adaptation of John Lahr‘s biography and Joe Orton‘s diaries, Prick Up Your Ears.

Chronicling playwright Orton’s rise to fame and his volatile relationship with Kenneth Halliwell Phil found distressing parallels not only with the Gallagher brothers but with the Whingers whose own meteoric ascent (albeit to nowhere and even then only in their heads) and similarly symbiotic alliance suggested some worrying parallels. Let’s just say Phil came out of the theatre and headed straight to Franchi’s to get a lock for his tool box and leave it at that, shall we?

Review – Entertaining Mr Sloane, Trafalgar Studios

An awful lot was riding on this. Too much. It really wasn’t fair.

There was the disappointing (but now legendary) trip to see Joe Orton‘s Loot at the Tricycle Theatre in December which led the Whingers to wonder whether Orton’s work might have passed its perform-by date.

And then since the last strains of Auld Lang Syne died away the Whingers have endured a miserable January with too much talk of recession and a slew of largely quite terrible trips to the theatre .

So, yes. it was not only the rehabilitation of Orton’s reputation that was at stake: it was nothing less than the Whingers faith in West End theatre that was riding on the new production of Entertaining Mr Sloane at the Trafalgar Studios: their very raison d’être.

Review – Loot, Tricycle Theatre

What a shambles. What a complete and utter shambles. And how entertaining.

Now that the Menier Chocolate factory has  – for the moment at least – caved in, the Whingers (never ones to rest on their laurels when there’s a handy theatre bar to lean against instead) thought it their duty to turn their attention to the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn.

Regular readers may recall that in an unexpected decision which sent shockwaves through the industry, the Tricycle was the recipient of the Award for Worst Seating in last year’s Whingies and it is looking a dead cert that they will steal the title this year too.

But before judging, the Whingers wanted to get the full picture of the awfulness of the seating policy (and it’s not just us – Russell thinks it’s shocking; so does Helen). So they took a trip up the Jubilee Line to Kilburn on Saturday afternoon to take in the matinee of Joe Orton‘s Loot.