Review – All About Eve, Noel Coward Theatre

There’s a cheeky story about the making of the 195O film classic All About Eve. Phil’s tried to find it on t’internet but all he could come up with was this 14 bumpy facts about All About Eve page. Worth-reading though.

Anyhoo he’ll deliver the story from his rather shaky memory as best he can. George Sanders (Addison deWitt in the film) was married to Zsa Zsa Gabor at the time and his newish wife was constantly turning up on the San Francisco film set to check up on him (well he was filming with Marilyn Monroe) and wanting Sanders to take her out shopping, to which the film’s writer/director Joseph L. Mankiewicz allegedly snapped “Fuck off Zsa Zsa we’re trying to make a movie here”. We’d love to believe it’s true.

Review – Filumena, Almeida theatre

“Tell me why we’re seeing this?” Andrew had grilled Phil with such alarming regularity that if he’d been looking into a mirror The Candyman would probably have appeared.

“Because Samantha Spiro is in it and I saw it years ago and really enjoyed it” Phil repeated with increasing impatience.

Of course Phil’s ‘years ago’ wasn’t Judi Dench’s Filumena, which was a mere 14 years ago, but the Franco Zeffirelli production from so long ago that Patricia Hayes was playing the maid and Joan Plowright’s youthful sons included Trevor Eve and Larry Lamb.

Those were the days when Phil would sit in the gallery of the Theatre Royal Brighton and see everything and – more peculiarly – enjoy almost everything. How times have changed.