Review – Show Boat, New London Theatre

Show Boat‘s coming!

Well actually Daniel Evans‘ production from a run at Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre is here, almost intact, though Michael Xavier (who played, ahem, Gaylord) went off into the Sunset with Glenn Close.

Phil’s third Show Boat, having seen the Opera North/RSC version at the Palladium and the Broadway/Hal Prince production at the Prince Edward Theatre. Incredibly Andrew’s first, though of course he’s seen one of the film versions.

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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 – Imagine This The Musical! New London Theatre

Whatever next? Abu Ghraib the Musical!? Guantánamo the Musical!?

Any new musical is a tremendous risk but to stage one set in 1942 about the occupants of the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw staging a show about Masada (where a siege by troops of the Roman Empire in AD 73 led to the mass suicide of Jewish rebels who preferred death to surrender) seems like, well, suicide.

Choose the same venue that housed the mega-flop Gone With the Wind – The Musical! and you might as well be go round backstage shouting “Macbeth” at every Tom, Dick and Manny.

Then there is the misfortune of staging it at a time when “the R word” is tightening belts.

And finally you have to take into account that this is, after all, Whingertown and the Whingers are curiously resistant to new musicals (all the good musicals having already been written in our humble opinion).

Review – Gone With The Wind – The Musical! (Act 1) at the New London Theatre

The London Marathon arrived a few days early for the Whingers. Standing in freezing weather watching people run past dressed as rhinos would have been a doddle compared to this.

Thankfully the Whingers and their plus-eight (remember that – it is important later) had come prepared: thermos flasks of coffee, energy drinks, sports chocolate, pillows and hot water bottles were all smuggled into the auditorium. Beneath his smart evening-wear Andrew was sporting a natty and almost fresh set of his favourite jim-jams.

Most shockingly of all, Phil had broken his “no caffeine after 5pm” rule (one of the conditions of his ASBO) in a determined effort to make it through to the very end of the four-hour (but getting shorter) marathon that is a preview of Gone With The Wind – The Musical!

The big question on everyone’s lips, of course, was: “How can they possibly squeeze the thousand-odd pages of Margaret Mitchell’s epic novel into “just” four hours? The answer is simple…