Review – Kenny Morgan, Arcola Theatre

We’re very slow off the starting blocks with Kenny Morgan, a timely companion to The Deep Blue Sea recently at the National, as it concerns events in Terrence Rattigan‘s life that inspired that play. So, if we’re a tad late to the table we would have to say it’s a separate table.

Like TDBS, Mike Poulton (Wolf Hall, Bring Up The Bodies)’s version begins with a body slumped in front of a gas fire; a failed suicide because someone’s forgotten to put a shilling in the meter.

Review – The Wizard of Oz, London Palladium

Featuring TV’s Danielle Hope as Dorothy and Bill Kenwright as the Harbinger of Doom.

We were astonished to read that co-producer Mister Bill Kenwright had been treading the Palladium boards as warm-up man for Andrew Lloyd Webber‘s new production of The Wizard of Oz. Frankly, it seemed unlikely.

But it is true.

It was true on Tuesday evening, anyway. There he was, reminiscing about Sunday Night at the London Palladium, talking up the quality of the orchestra, the beauty of the sets and the “zillions” (which must mean TWOO has now outstripped Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark as the most expensive musical of all time) spent on the double stage revolve.

Stopping just short of slapping a thigh he encouraged the crowd to sing along, clap, cheer, scream and boo the wicked witch before casually dropping in the fact that Michael Crawford wouldn’t actually be giving his wonderful Wizard or his Professor Marvel. Or his Emerald City doorman, come to that. It’s times like this make you wish for the simple white slip poking out of your programme.

The cause? Not mere laryngitis but “blood on his nodules”, apparently – a medical detail that perhaps unsurprisingly failed to whip the crowd much further into the desired state of frenzy but which did cause the Whingers to kick themselves for not packing the WEW Patent Rectal Thermometer.

An economically monickered understudy called “Zeph” (usually “Munchkin Mayor/Ensemble”) would be stepping into Mister Crawford’s beret.

Review – Blowing Whistles, Leicester Square Theatre

The world of promiscuity is a place that has passed the Whingers by for reasons that are a mystery to them but perhaps clear as day to other people.

Their own promiscuousness is confined to making too many casual and bad choices – a couple of unfulfilling hours in a darkened theatre with hundreds of strangers.

But both Whingers can hold their hands up and quite categorically declare that neither of them have ever fornicated with Russell Brand. And, in the unlikely event that they had, they’re quite sure these would be liaisons Brand would definitely want to keep to himself.

But a casual choice was made on Tuesday evening seduced by four stars from Michael Coveney, Time Out and de Jongh with the latter comparing it to Ibsen’s A Doll’s House.

High praise indeed. So why did the Whingers still approach Matthew Todd‘s Blowing Whistles at the Leicester Square Theatre with such dread?