Review – Kate Bush, Before the Dawn, Hammersmith Thingy

Bit late in the day really, and not the sort of thing Phil would normally write about, but Kate Bush‘s return to the stage after three and a half decades in Before the Dawn has been described as theatre as much as a concert. Plus it’s directed by Adrian Noble and includes contributions from other theatre people like lighting designer Mark Henderson, illusionist Paul Kieve and video and projection design from Jon Driscoll. Sounds like theatre to us. And we just wanted to brag remind ourselves we were there.

Review – Ghost the Musical, Piccadilly Theatre

Love can be a tricky and messy business. Particularly if your mother-in-law-to-be has access to the internet or your bride-to-be has to be (allegedly) intercepted at Nice airport.

Yet these must be but small concerns compared with having a girlfriend who keeps a potter’s wheel in her apartment.

Yes, pot-throwing!

After all these years there are few on-stage experiences that can be deemed firsts for the Whingers but this surely would be one. Forget whether the hit 1990 film Ghost could be successfully adapted for the stage as a musical, what the Whingers were most eagerly anticipating Ghost the Musical  was just how would they handle that iconic scene?

Not that the Whingers have any proficiency to judge her skills at the wheel, Phil hasn’t tossed a pot since school and those results wouldn’t even give Deirdre Barlow’s new-found potting skills a run for their money. But Caissie Levy’s Molly centres her clay very well and gets stuck in sloshing water liberally. The not-so-metaphorical (but endearingly small) phallus she wistfully fingers tells us all we need to know about how much she’s missing her recently deceased boyfriend Sam (Richard Fleeshman), if not why.

Andrew was shaking with dry laughter from the moment her wheel trundled on. Phil came over all nostalgic for the Potter’s Wheel TV interludes*. Expect Grayson Perry to turn up for the official opening night.

But let us crack on before you glaze over.

Review – Matilda, RSC Courtyard Theatre, Stratford upon Avon

The Whingers were brought up on a diet of Enid Blyton and The Water Babies so there were mixed feelings about trailing all the way to Stratford Upon Avon to see the RSC’s new musical Matilda, based on the Roald Dahl story. So mixed, in fact, that Phil ended up not going.

Review – Zorro the Musical, Garrick Theatre

Gasp! The mark of the Whingers!