Review – Xanadu, Southwark Playhouse

Oh how we’ve waited.

Yes, we’ve waited and waited for the Godot that we feared might never arrive. It’s taken a full eight years for Xanadu to come to London; the the highlight of our 2007 sojourn to New York and not just because there was a strike on Broadway and it was one of the few shows still running. We praise the gods it still was.

Andrew even spent a not inconsiderable amount of time bending the ear of a well-known producer trying to convince her (a clue?) that this was the show she absolutely had to bring to London. He even put on his casting director’s hat by suggesting Sheridan Smith in the lead. Sadly bigger fish were in both their frying pans.

Review – Storm in a Flower Vase, Arts Theatre

Q What does it take to get Andrew back inside a theatre?

A Flower arranging.

Andrew knows a thing or two about arranging dainty blooms and, like Phil, is old enough to have heard of Constance Spry. Well, we knew she was to flowers what Mary Berry is to cookery but we knew little else. Phil also thought she wrote short sentimental poems, but after an interval discussion and much rummaging around in the recesses of their memory banks (like a Much Ado About Nothing lead) decided he was confusing her with Patience Strong.

She also invented ‘Coronation Chicken’, which sadly, is only briefly alluded to in Storm in a Flower Vase, probably because there was so many other things going on in her life there just wasn’t time. Or perhaps she was embarrassed about concocting such a hideous assault on the taste buds? She should be.

Review – By Jeeves, Landor Theatre

Some people can be very kind.

When Phil announced to anyone who would listen at the Sunday matinée preview of By Jeeves at the Landor Theatre that he’d seen the original production, the overly generous and perhaps slightly naïve response was “That must be fifteen years ago!”

What of course Phil meant was the pre-London, Bristol Hippodrome tryout of Jeeves (as it was called in those long gone days back when Colin Firth was probably still on the throne).

If the Whingers had been together (in the co-dependent theatregoers sense) then its doubtful they would have made it even to the interval. Early previews apparently ran at four and three-quarter hours. Phil remembers the performance he endured going well beyond three and a half hours. Phil’s family became prototype Whingers unanimously agreeing it wasn’t very good and way too long. If only Sir Trevor Nunn had been brought in to cut it down to size.

Sheared of most of its numbers (only three remain from the original) and reworked in 1996 as By Jeeves it’s now running at an easier to digest two and a half hours (including interval).

But sadly, it felt every minute of it.

Review – Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Novello Theatre

Those who know the Whingers will be aware that Phil is very conventional, abhors change and is rather partial to tradition. Even the more easy-going, liberal and forward-looking Andrew has habits, some of which are rather disagreeable.

So trying something new and indulging in a little experimentation is for them somewhat outré.

The Whingers attended the final preview of Tennessee Williams‘ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at the Novello Theatre last night and the novelty was not that it was an all-black cast, but that they had already seen it a week earlier at the dress rehearsal.

And the test was not whether they could keep their mouths shut (which apart from a teensy Twitter they surprised themselves and did) but whether this would prove once and for all that reviewing early previews (for which they are oft criticised ) is unfair. Does a lot happen between early previews and opening night? Were they putting themselves on the line and undermining their modus operandi?

Review – Rock – Oval House Theatre

Rock is a play of two halves.

It has an interval.

But that’s rather too simplistic. It’s much more profound than that.