Some mopping up – Hot Tin/ Slaves of Solitude / Young Marx

For those kind folk (that should probably read as singular rather than plural) who have been interested enough to ask where Phil’s been, here lies the answer. Hip replacement don’t you know, beating Patti LuPone to the crutches by a matter of weeks. He feels Patti’s pain. And he’s just beginning to dip the toe on the end of his newly bionic leg back into the world of theatre that doesn’t come with a surgeon and anaesthetist.

Review – Flare Path, Theatre Royal Haymarket

It’s an perfectly understandable but misheld conception that the Whingers are difficult to please. Actually it’s deceptively untroublesome.

It’s the little things really: alighting at a theatre and ascertaining the show is 90 minutes with no hiatus; finding enough wine in the bottle for another couple of glasses when we thought we’d drained it; hearing on the wireless that another actress has been glorified as a Dame Commander of the British Empire.

But there’s nothing quite like discovering a new salutation with which to raise one’s pre and post show libations. And believe us, we’ve been practising diligently after inspecting this revival of Terrence Rattigan‘s Flare Path.

“Tinkerty tonk!”

Try it. It trips off the tongue in the most profoundly satisfying manner. No other shibboleth is nearly as agreeable.

So even if there had been little else to fancy in Sir Trev of Nunn‘s first production of his season at the Theatre Royal Haymarket we would have still emerged deeply obliged, our lives enriched.