Review – The Girls, Phoenix Theatre

Saggy, baggy, in need of trimming and tightening up and decidedly over-exposed.

No we’re not talking about the women d’ un certain age disrobing on stage. As if we would be so unkind. We’re talking about the show.

Having been underwhelmed by Tim Firth‘s Calendar Girls both on film (2003) and even more so on stage (2008), Phil had given his latest musical version, rebranded (rather clumsily) as The Girls, a very wide berth indeed.

Then out trotted the five-star reviews from newspapers (about 8 of them) which suggested he was missing something. In fact one threw down the bold gauntlet of promise that it would make him “cry with laughter”.

Review – Nell Gwynn, Apollo Theatre

Still playing a bit of theatrical catch up here with those shows that might appear to tickle our peculiar fancies.

So it seemed Jessica Swale‘s Nell Gwynn a broad, camp, comedic, backstage-with-royal-patronage tale of big frocks and massive millinery, a bit of cross-dressing and based on historical fact looked as if it might tickle and tick all our boxes. And it might have ticked big time if that other broad, camp, comedic, backstage-with-royal-patronage tale of big frocks and massive millinery, a bit of cross-dressing and based on historical fact, Mr Foote’s Other Leg hadn’t got to us first.

Review – When We Are Married, Garrick Theatre

You know you’re in good hands when the curtain rises and the set gets a round of applause.*

Simon Higlett‘s well-dressed Victorian sitting room drew gasps of admiration from the crowd, possibly because it brought back distant memories although presumably not from the Eastern Europeans or possibly Russians behind the Whingers with sweets wrapped in old Eastern Bloc cellophane which had been designed to be LOUDER when crinkled than the sad cellophane of the decadent West . WE WILL BURY YOU IN OUR CELLOPHANE.

But we digress. Having grappled with the Glaswegian accents in Men Should Weep last week it was comforting for the Whingers to head in a southerly direction and have their ears caressed by Yorkshire tongues. Phil’s mother was born in York (Nunnery Lane, since you asked) and he was oop there only a few weeks ago so it almost felt like home to him, only without old underpants strewn everywhere.