Review – Twelfth Night, Cottesloe Theatre

NT: Peter Hall, you’re 80th birthday is coming up and we wondered if you had any thoughts about a gift?
PH: I’d like to give you another Twelfth Night.
NT: We-ell, it’s traditional for the birthday boy to be the recipient really. Go on. We’ve had a whip-round. What would you like?
PH: Yes, Twelfth Night I think.
NT: How about a nice foot spa?
PH: My daughter can be Viola.
NT: *Sigh*. Oh, all right  then.
PH: A nice, slow version I think.
NT: Both of our big auditoriums appear to be booked up. I’m afraid it will have to be the Cottesloe.

Review – Bedroom Farce, Duke of York’s Theatre

Some showbiz names are so inextricably linked as to almost be inseparable: Burton and Taylor, Morecambe and Wise, Rogers Rodgers and Hammerstein, Jannette and Ian Krankie, Phil and Andrew. And then there’s Jenny Seagrove and Bill Kenwright.

But creatives providing gainful employment for ‘er indoors is nothing new in showbiz. Think Tim Burton and Helena Bonham Carter, (more ‘er next door in their case). Think Woody Allen and Mia Farrow (more ‘er across Central Park in theirs).

Having told a friend he was seeing Jenny Seagrove in Bedroom Farce Phil received a rhetorical text to enquire, “Is it a Bill Kenwright production?”. It’s a running gag. Of course it was. And why not?

What – no wigs?

Sorry, you are too late to take advantage of this incredible and unique opportunity…

The Rose Theatre, Kingston is offering six budding actors an incredible and unique opportunity to perform in the Rose’s first in-house production, Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost directed by Sir Peter Hall. You will appear alongside a truly talented cast which includes Peter Bowles and be directly involved in a hugely significant production in the history of the Rose Theatre.

Review – Pygmalion, The Old Vic

“There must be something radically wrong about the play if it pleases everybody, but at the moment I cannot find what it is.”

Shaw’s comment on his own Pygmalion is one of the few kinds of challenge to which the West End Whingers feel they can confidently rise so they were eagerly anticipating their evening at Peter Hall‘s revival at the Old Vic and – to save precious drinking time later – had already scrawled “too long!!!!” and “squeaking seats” in their notebooks.