Review – A Very Very Very Dark Matter, The Bridge Theatre

A Very Very Very Dark Matter certainly is what it says on the tin. But in opening that grubby little tin be warned, we might spoil the contents for you. Continue at your peril.

Review – Hangmen, Royal Court

Phil had an uncle whose job as a prison governor meant he was called on to witness some of the last hangings in this country. He also kept the autobiography of Britain’s most ‘celebrated’ hangman, Albert Pierrepoint, on his bookcase and Phil is led to believe, visited the pub that Pierrepoint ran after retiring from execution.

As a child, Phil looked on most of this with a mix of macabre fascination and horror, which was much the same reaction that he had to the first scene in Martin McDonagh‘s, Hangmen.

Review – The Cripple of Inishmaan, Noel Coward Theatre

If the Whingers had £50 million or so in the bank they would be taking life easy.

When not idling the hours away in a most dilatory of fashions, they would be jetting off to the far-flung corners of their bucket lists. They would be breaking their principles by occupying Premium Seats in the theatre before indulging in post-show discussions eating fancy chow and drinking fancy wine.

But then the Whingers are not 23 any more than they are not Daniel Radcliffe whose post-Potter life has already seen him throwing himself into the deep end of a stage career by throwing off his clothes on both sides of the Atlantic, taking on the lead in a Broadway musical and now tackling an Irish accent whilst surrounded by bona fide Irish actors. No one can accuse him of ducking a challenge.

Review – The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Young Vic

Picture it. Two very troubled people, interdependent and inseparable due to circumstance; one is very old, extremely crotchety and makes the other one’s life hell.

But how much is the careworn younger one culpable for the older person’s distress? What is behind this ghastly symbiotic relationship of psychological cruelty. Why can’t they live together? Why daren’t they exist apart.

Goodness! Who’d have thought there’d be so many parallels between the characters in Martin McDonagh‘s* exceedingly black comedy The Beauty Queen of Leenane (newly revived at the Young Vic) and the Whingers’ own peculiar arrangement. The only immediate difference being that the Whingers, thankfully, were never umbilically connected.

Oh, and that Phil doesn’t eat Complan – but that can only be a matter of time.

Review – A Behanding in Spokane, Schoenfeld Theatre

And be-jetlagged on B-Broadway, the be-whinging began.

Be-Jesus, going to the theatre on The Broadway is a strange experience. It’s really not very friendly at all.

Waiting innocently for Phil to emerge from the Schoenfeld Theatre rest-room Andrew was twice told to move along by an extremely officious usher. “I’m just waiting for my friend to attend to his bladder again,” he explained only for the woman to repeat her instruction – but with the dial turned up from “frosty” to “mildly aggressive”.

The usher at the top of the aisle seemed quite friendly until he looked at our tickets and saw that we weren’t within his realm. Turning away quite regally he uttered, “The usher at the front will seat you” in a tone so weary with disdain that the Whingers were quite awestruck by his ability to dismiss them so utterly in eight innocent words.

And so it went on.