The Whingers Awards 2009 – the very worst and the not so bad

With another year rapidly drawing to a close it is time for the Whingers to reflect and indulge themselves in a little more navel gazing – not our own navels, as that would be even duller than usual for you – but the innies and outies of the sometimes fluffy navels of London’s artistic directors, producers, players and theatres and award The Whingies to the most outstanding ones.

But first our own navels: 2009 has been a year of heady excitement for the Whingers. It was a year that saw them inadvertently whip up controversy and heated debate again and again and again.

It was also a year in which artistic differences reared their ugly heads threatening the very fabric of the West End Whingers, a tear in the polyester bed-sheet of their existence so delicate that a clumsily clipped toenail might have been all it took to rent it from headboard to toe straight down the middle.

The Whingers were courted by the British Broadcasting Company, libelled as “muckrakers” in the National Press, lampooned in song and Phil had his pithiest aphorism to date quoted (yet mainly without attribution) by national critics. There was an evening of confusion in which Phil was mistaken for Michael Grandage and the Whingers finally received an award for their artistic endeavours.

And we finally got the opportunity to choose between the Merlot and the Marlowe.

So, without further do, here are the results of the Kentish Town and Vauxhall juries:

Review – Over There by Mark Ravenhill, Royal Court

One thing’s for sure: when the Whingers eventually get around to putting their money where their humongous mouths are and writing their own play, it will have a snappy title.

They’ve already got a swathe of clever, witty names for their magnum opus; in fact they were tossing a few around only the other day. But since these pages are read by well-known and budding playwrights desperately seeking displacement activity and filling in the empty hours generously donated to them in the name of writer’s block, we are unable to risk sharing them with you here.

The only thing stopping us is that we just don’t have a theme, a plot or even an idea. Just some titles.

Mark Ravenhill is no stranger to memorable and arresting titles.  In fact, wasn’t his career launched on the controversy of Shopping and F**king – the most Christian Bale of all play titles – before everyone got controversial and started inserting asterisks in their headings?.

Anyway, on this occasion he has disappointingly come up with one of those really anodyne hard-to-remember, hard-to-Google titles: Over There. Most people – like the Whingers – seem to be referring to it as “that play with the twins in” or simply “the twins play”.