Review – Pinocchio, National Theatre

You can’t say the National’s not hell-bent on success with Pinocchio.

Disney have offered up the stage rights of the Oscar-winning score from their 1940 classic animation and promised they won’t interfere. The songs are arranged by Tony/Grammy/Olivier Award-winning musical director Martin Lowe. The book’s by Tony and Olivier Award-winner Dennis (Matilda) Kelly and it’s directed by Tony Award-winner John (Once and the Harry Potter plays) Tiffany. The design team of Bob Crowley (set/costume/puppet co-designer) and Paule Constable (lighting) have 4 Oliviers and 9 Tony Awards between them. Goodness.

The creative table is positively groaning with talent and awards, so how come the National are serving up turkey again this Christmas?

Review – The Twits, Royal Court Theatre

The Royal Court showed great goodwill to us all by not offering up The Twits as their Christmas show. Indeed – and rather bizarrely – this partially seasonal entertainment started previews the day after Easter Monday.

And, yada, yada yada, it was the first preview that Phil indeed attended and of course he is perhaps a little mature (in the elderly sense) for the audience it is aimed at. So, he will bear these matters in mind. But only a tad.

For this is Roald Dahl “mischievously adapted” by Enda Walsh and what a strange and untimely beast it is.

Review – Let the Right One In, Apollo Theatre

A few things you may not know about Let the Right One In.

Let the Right One In is not a UKIP immigration policy.

Nor is Let the Right One Nigel Farage’s new campaign slogan. Well, not yet anyway.

Phil can’t think of the title, Let the Right One without humming “The Hokey Cokey”.

Review – Once, Phoenix Theatre

“It’s got an on-stage bar where you can buy your drinks during the interval!” *

Phil knew how to persuade Andrew to take in Once. That’s all it took.

In fact, it won last year’s Tony Award for Best Musical, and that it was based on an micro-budget indie film (winning an Oscar for best song, “Falling Slowly”) that we hadn’t seen and that it was a bit Oirish. But that was about it.

Even such scant knowledge seems to put one way ahead of the man on the 88. Mention Once to most people and they say, “What’s that?” It has slipped under the radar and really not helped by opening mere weeks after the previous year’s Best Musical Tony-Winning behemoth, Book of Mormon. But then that has a budget to pebbledash its publicity so generously you couldn’t possible not know about it.

But this show has another card up its sleeve. It’s at the Phoenix Theatre. We can’t remember when we were last there (Phil thinks it was probably Into the Woods in 1990) as it has been clogged up largely with that theatrical canker, Blood Brothers for 21 years.

Review – Peter Pan, Barbican Theatre

With the Whingers finding their theatrical diaries peculiarly empty four star reviews in the FT and in the Daily Telegraph*turned the Whingers’ last minute fancy to the new version of J M Barrie‘s  Peter Pan at the Barbican Theatre.

Money being quite tight at the moment following the excesses of the West End Whingers’ party, Phil phoned the Barbican’s charming (it turns out) press officer to see if they might consider giving generously only to be told that the centre’s policy was not to supply comps for bloggers unless they were affiliated to some sort of august journal (we’re paraphrasing slightly).

Phil shoved his gearstick of charm into top gear and after a little deliberation the Barbican relented and agreed to give the Whingers one free ticket (you can see why Phil doesn’t try speed dating) but the Whingers would have to buy the second one. Yes it was just like those supermarket Buy-One-Get-One-Free Offers. At least on this occasion Phil was given a BOGOF rather than being told to BOG OFF for once.

So with their noses slightly out of joint (well, one nose out of joint) the Whingers thought it only appropriate they should produce half a review – maybe just the bad bits or every other word, perhaps. Better still: every other letter!

J h (B a k W t c) T f a y’s N t o a T e t e o S o l n‘s c -p o u t o  w t  t e B r i a o D v d G e g‘s g i t y n w v r i n of J  B r i ‘s P t r P n h s e t n u s e  a l a s c a i n  w t p n t .