Review – The Pride, Trafalgar Studios

Well, it’s been a quite a while.

The Whingers have been busying themselves doing other things. We’ve been enjoying the summer (once it finally arrived) with copious alfresco eating and drinking (obvs) and not really that keen to be sweating it out in the dark in search of amusement.

Andrew took the waters in Lourdes, Phil took to the waters in Spain and found entertainment elsewhere in the brilliant Breaking Bad (he’s just finished off season 4) and is now working on Andrew to check it out. Let’s hope Sonia Friedman finds the time to become addicted too (Andrew thinks she probably has people to watch it for her) and puts one of its cast (Bryan Cranston or Giancarlo Esposito or Aaron Paul?) on the London stage despite the rather bizarre situation of it not yet appearing on proper telly here.

The only theatrical sortie between us was when Phil returned to The Book of Mormon and he’s happy to report that the cast seemed as fresh as daises despite being 6 months into the run.

Yes, we’ve been otherwise engaged and now the thrilling news that we’ve 160 new Barbara Cartland novels to get through suggests our theatre going is likely to become even more intermittent. But before we curl up in a miasma of fluffy romance we found time to wonder why Lord Webber’s new musical has been given such a dull title. Did a team of people come up with Stephen Ward deliberately to avoid what happened last time? Of course we don’t want to suggest that it won’t be anything less than magnificent. But if it isn’t won’t some smart Alec christen it Terminal Ward or Leavin’ Bored?

And thanks for the flood of enquiries as to where we’ve been. All three of them. You know who you are. Thanks for thinking of us.

So it took Alexi Kaye Campbell‘s The Pride to lure us back, despite some dubbing it a ‘gay play’ and performed at the rather unprepossessing Trafalgar Studios.

Review – Charley’s Aunt, Menier Chocolate Factory

It used to be said that Roddy Llewellyn once had a small part in Charley’s Aunt.

Tee hee. That silly old chestnut of a gag that naturally appeals to the Whingers’ puerile sense of humour. But then Brandon Thomas‘ Charley’s Aunt is a silly old (1892) chestnut of a comedy and strangely one they Whingers had never seen despite its fame and its illustrious roll call of famous ‘Aunts’ (listed in the Menier programme) which includes Noël Coward, Rex Harrison, Arthur Askey, John Gielgud, Frankie Howard, Danny La Rue, John Inman, John Mills, Griff Rhys Jones and Mel Smith.*

It is indeed the comic cross-dresser’s Hamlet.

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.