Andrew is on sabbatical but Phil is soldiering on to help you decide between the Merlot and the Marlowe and generally putting London's West End theatre to rights
It’s not everyday you see Christopher Timothy portrayed on stage. Or Larry Lamb come to that.
Though whilst the latter is actually the first editor of The Sun newspaper (as we know it) Mr Timothy’s connection will be remembered by those of us old enough to remember him as the voice of their TV ads.
Ink is James (This House, The Vote) Graham‘s latest foray into the world of what we call recent history. The creation of The Sun newspaper as a tabloid. Read the rest of this entry »
The signs were so enormously encouraging.
A new (very) British musical with a crack team behind it. Music by James Bond film composer David Arnold, lyrics by Richard Thomas (Jerry Springer: the Opera), a book by Richard Bean (One Man, Two Governors) and helmed by Rupert Goold, AD at the Almeida who also delivered in spades (and axes) with the musical version of American Psycho.
On the downside Made in Dagenham is yet another film-to-stage adaptation. Read the rest of this entry »
Naughty Mike Bartlett.
This of course the same Mike Bartlett who once presented us with his Cock. Naturally we had a lot of fun with that title at the time and like childish schoolboys will always whip it out to play around with when the opportunity arises.
But it seems Bartlett is having even more fun with his “future history play”, King Charles III.
His playwriting credits are going to have to be very carefully organised in the future to avoid them being listed as Love, Love Love, King Charles III, Cock. Read the rest of this entry »
Accident or design?
The words “ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE” are projected across the three sides of Es Devlin’s stylish box set for American Psycho with the words “ABANDON WHO” appearing alone together on one of the sections.
Phil assumed it was a subtle joke referencing Matt Smith leaving behind his Doctor Who persona and returning to theatre. Read the rest of this entry »
Inappropriately, since it was the Olympic year, we’re a bit late off the starting blocks with our highly-anticipated annual Whingie Awards.
Frankly we believed we might not need to bother. The world was going to end. Andrew had packed his onesie and headed off to Bugarach. Phil was left sitting around in his meggins self-medicating in preparation musing which shows would be the theatrical cockroaches that might survive the impending apocalypse.
The Mousetrap obviously, Phantom and The Woman in Black no doubt, though perhaps Viva Forever! should hunker in a bunker and pray.
Of course it wasn’t the end after all. The world continues and we must carry on going to the theatre. It’s a bit of a let down. But as we toast the new and possibly unlucky New Year of 2013 we’ve had our hands down the back of the theatrical sofa digging for the occasional treasure, copious amounts of fluff and the occasional best-forgotten unmentionable. Read the rest of this entry »
People ask us why we go to the theatre so much. Often we ask ourselves why we go at all.
Lucy Prebble‘s first post-ENRON play The Effect provides an answer: it’s a distraction from the fact that we’re all going to die. Everything is. Read the rest of this entry »
And really, when you think about it, what better way to mark the tenth anniversary of one of the biggest man-made catastrophes of modern times than by creating another one? Read the rest of this entry »
Setting aside the cold cuts, the chocolate brazils and the tins of Quality Street the Whingers just had to get out of their houses for a bit of light relief in the form of some Shakespeare.
Shakespeare? Goodness wasn’t there another episode of Celebrity Come Dine With Me to keep them glued to their cathode ray tubes?
But festive television was beginning to pall. A sub-standard Doctor Who made Andrew pine for the return of David Tennant (controversial, we know), nothing greater than an occasional smile was to be had from the much trailed Come Fly With Me and the Whingers’ new BFF Miranda Hart seemed to be in danger of over-exposure.
Only the triumphant return of Upstairs Downstairs with the indomitable combination of Anne Reid, Jean Marsh, Dame Eileen Atkins and Adrian Scarborough prevented Andrew from advertising his television set on freecycle along with all the “gifts” he received from Phil. Read the rest of this entry »
Andrew’s excitement was palpable. “They’ve turned it into a bar!” he trilled as he took his seat in the auditorium. “They’ve finally found a use for the Cottesloe!”.
And indeed it seemed at first glance that they had. Designer Miriam Buether has transformed the National Theatre‘s ghastly Cottesloe space almost beyond recognition. How astute and splendidly cunning of her to turn it into the place in which the Whingers would feel most at home.
A long, orange S-shaped bar-cum-stage snakes around the groundlings, some of whom are perched on natty red bar stools while others stand (and later slump) behind them in holding pens.
Less limelight-hugging patrons such as the Whingers sit in galleries surveying the proceedings from above. Read the rest of this entry »
No theatre today. Too hot. No footballs.
Time to play theatrical clerihews instead. Read the rest of this entry »
Someone behind the WhatsOnStage.com Awards 2010 must have a slightly twisted sense of humour. Or incredible insight.
Why would they assume that on Valentine’s Day both Whingers would be available? Do we really give off the stench of lonely ageing bachelors available to turn up on the most romantic day of the year rather than cosying up with a beloved in some over-priced eaterie?
Well, read into this whatever you like, but as it happened the Whingers were both free. They had been invited to occupy the press room backstage at the 10th year of the awards and “interview the winners”. Mmmmm, interview. The Whingers discussed this opportunity, decided it sounded like quite a lot of work and opted instead to act as a couple of bookends for the winners’ photographs to add a touch of glamour to the proceedings (as if the evening wasn’t glamorous enough). Read the rest of this entry »
Well, the fire door had been carelessly left open so like model citizens we went in and pulled it firmly shut behind us and then it turned out we were in the Price of Wales Theatre and there was free drink and Rachel Weisz and Jude Law were and so we thought, what the hell, and stayed for The Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards 2009.
Of course, it’s pretty much the definition of “yesterday’s news”* (well, you try filing a blog post when they’ve been topping up your wine glass not stop for for three hours and to be fair Andrew was tweeting it live) and so you know that Weisz and Law were among the winners. We sort of guessed that when we saw them there. Read the rest of this entry »
Like Andrew on a weekend break, Enron comes with an absurd amount of baggage: it picked up suitcases full of rave reviews at The Chichester Festival Theatre and hat-boxes full of predictions that it will scoop Best Play in the awards season.
Its West End transfer was announced before the sold-out Royal Court season even opened. Everyone’s talking about it.
But sadly for the Whingers that pesky old Black Watch effect is back. How can anything possibly be as good as all those critics said it was? It just can’t. And so it proved to be with Enron, the story of the energy company that fooled everyone into thinking it was better than it was. Read the rest of this entry »
Aren’t the Whingers selfless putting you, dear reader, before their own personal safety? For last night the Whingers – surgical masks on faces – bravely risked a public gathering before their inevitable outlawing (public gatherings, that is, not the Whingers).
Laughing in the face of swine flu the Whingers trotted off on their trotters, like pigs in sh*t, crackling with excitement, to the National Theatre (before it gets shut down) for the first preview of Time and the Conways by that lovely old leftie J B Priestley. Read the rest of this entry »
Phil was having one of his cross days:
“Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Smite flat the thick rotundity o’ the world!
Crack nature’s moulds, an germens spill at once,
That make ingrateful man,” said Phil.
“Look, it’s just a drop of rain; it’s hardly spitting,” protested Andrew.
“And besides I’ve got a brolly.
“Do you want to go and see King Lear at the Young Vic or not,” asked Andrew, his patience wearing somewhat thin.
The answer was clearly going to be “not” and so it was that Phil passed up on the opportunity to witness what promised to be one of the most innovative productions of a William Shakespeare play since the Pie Crust Players had a stab at Hamlet under the direction of Julie Walters in the classic Victoria Wood sketch (sadly and strangely not on YouTube). Read the rest of this entry »
A West End Whinger 