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 – Made in Dagenham, Adelphi Theatre

The signs were so enormously encouraging.

A new (very) British musical with a crack team behind it. Music by James Bond film composer David Arnold, lyrics by Richard Thomas (Jerry Springer: the Opera), a book by Richard Bean (One Man, Two Governors) and helmed by Rupert Goold, AD at the Almeida who also delivered in spades (and axes) with the musical version of American Psycho.

On the downside Made in Dagenham is yet another film-to-stage adaptation.

Review – Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense, Duke of York’s Theatre

Inclement weather, a flurry of Oscar-nominated films to see, a nasty bug, seasons 5 of both Mad Men and Breaking Bad to plough through and vague attemps to understand the hammer rule in the curling. It seemed Phil could think of plenty of excuses not to go to the theatre over the last few weeks.

Somehow he just hadn’t got around to Jeeves and Wooster in Perfect Nonsense, so the announcement that there was to be a cast change (Mark Heap and Robert Webb from 7th of April) galvanised him into doing something about it.

Review – Uncle Vanya, Vaudeville Theatre

Oh dear, oh dear. We shouldn’t really be surprised but the Whingers seem to be of an age.

We had always taken Uncle Vanya to be a character for the almost-elderly –  one of the last big actorly stops before King Lear.

But Vanya is practically a child. In Lindsay Posner‘s new production (translation by Christopher Hampton) they have even aged him up six years (to edge a little closer to the actor Ken Stott‘s actual age). This is what you get for reading up on things. It was all a bit traumatic and without being too specific, let’s just say that it won’t be long before the Whingers are perceiving Lear as some kind of callow youth too. It’s all rather depressing.

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 – Rookery Nook, Menier Chocolate Factory

21st April:  On this day in 753BC Romulus and Remus founded Rome;  in 1926AD was born our beloved Queen and in 1949 Broadway star Patti LuPone made her debut in the world.

And on some unspecified 21st April between then and now, Andrew was born.

Now Phil – having passed many, many more anniversaries than Andrew – is wise enough to know that one should enjoy oneself on one’s birthday.

But Andrew – a slow learner if ever there were one – bizarrely chose to celebrate the passage of his time towards inevitable death with yet another trip to the theatre. To see a preview of the frothy farce – Rookery Nook, to be precise.

Review – Hamlet with David Tennant, RSC, Stratford-upon-Avon

Yes, yes, we know it’s not the West End and that it’s Shakespeare, but it had to be done.

Done by Andrew, anyway. Phil refused to be dragged away from his metropolitan “lifestyle” (Let us hope that involved him doing something about the state of his fridge for there is surely something rotten in it) for a trip to Stratford-upon-Avon.

Even now Phil insists that it is necessary to change trains to get there and refuses to listen to Andrew’s account of the contemporary transport arrangements. He utterly refutes Andrew’s report that there are no longer such things as third class carriages. Andrew has held his tongue.

Oh well, every dog has his day and so, it was that Sue K (Clarification: Andrew is the dog in this analogy, not Sue) stepped into Phil’s fill-in mode. And the first thing to report is that an evening at the theatre apparently does not necessarily involve bickering. This was something of revelation to Andrew who found the entire outing both intellectually stimulating and emotionally restful.