Review – After October – Finborough Theatre

Plays with similar themes seem to becoming a bit of a habit with us.

Following on from last week’s Once in a Lifetime which took a pop at playwrights struggling to make sense of being holed up in Hollywood studio basements comes Rodney Ackland‘s possibly semi-autobiographical not-seen-in-London-for-over-eighty-years After October.

Review – Nell Gwynn, Apollo Theatre

Still playing a bit of theatrical catch up here with those shows that might appear to tickle our peculiar fancies.

So it seemed Jessica Swale‘s Nell Gwynn a broad, camp, comedic, backstage-with-royal-patronage tale of big frocks and massive millinery, a bit of cross-dressing and based on historical fact looked as if it might tickle and tick all our boxes. And it might have ticked big time if that other broad, camp, comedic, backstage-with-royal-patronage tale of big frocks and massive millinery, a bit of cross-dressing and based on historical fact, Mr Foote’s Other Leg hadn’t got to us first.

Review – The Mousetrap, St Martin’s Theatre

We know! The Mousetrap!

Why? Because it’s there. Because it was about time. Because Phil and an awful lot of other people had never actually seen it despite being in its 58th year (As is Phil. Or thereabouts. Who’s counting?).

And because a group offer unexpectedly became available (see footnote 1). The Whingers proposed a group outing and the take-up was astronomic. So 18 celestial people (including apparently respectable theatre commentators such as  him and  him and her and her and a consumptive her) met up in a sunny Seven Dials to tuck into Andrew’s celebratory mousetrap (actually a bag of Mini-Babybels for practical reasons) before traipsing round the corner for the show’s 23,972nd performance. Yes, more cheese, creaky cheese, from the  the Queen of Crime, the High Priestess of the Whodunit, Agatha Christie.