Review – Company, Gielgud Theatre

Gender-swapped roles? Aren’t we not just a teensey-weensy bit over them by now?

This is the week that saw our first female Doctor Who. The National Theatre drops the willies willy-nilly, just because it can. Now Stephanie Sondheim has been thrown the ball, dropped it (or them) and has been persuaded to sanction a change for the central character of Bobby to Bobbie in his 1970 musical Company. If it’s to give actresses (at Whingers’ Towers we still like to call them actresses) more work it’s counter-productive, as three of the lady roles in the show are now played by men.

Review – Urinetown, St James Theatre

From the moment Phil first saw the St James Theatre’s urinals he has considered them the most stylish of any theatrical gentlemen’s powder rooms in London.

He is so impressed by the venue’s porcelain he once dragged a well known lady actor in with him for a peep, (after checking they were empty first of course). It’s a wonder that the theatre doesn’t take a tip from the show’s plot and charge for their use. Imagine the outrage and free publicity that would attract.

Urinetown is a “hilarious satirical comedy” Broadway musical (music by Mark Hollmann, lyrics by Hollmann and Greg Kotis, book by Kotis) set in a drought, which gets its British premiere after the wettest British winter since our last wettest British winter. The producers probably can’t believe their luck. Let’s hope they’re thanking the gay marriage bill.

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.