Review – Twelfth Night, Cottesloe Theatre

NT: Peter Hall, you’re 80th birthday is coming up and we wondered if you had any thoughts about a gift?
PH: I’d like to give you another Twelfth Night.
NT: We-ell, it’s traditional for the birthday boy to be the recipient really. Go on. We’ve had a whip-round. What would you like?
PH: Yes, Twelfth Night I think.
NT: How about a nice foot spa?
PH: My daughter can be Viola.
NT: *Sigh*. Oh, all right  then.
PH: A nice, slow version I think.
NT: Both of our big auditoriums appear to be booked up. I’m afraid it will have to be the Cottesloe.

Review – Waiting for Godot with two of the X-Men, Theatre Royal Haymarket

The Whingers were once described by someone quite influential as “moderately influential” but the truth of this throwaway remark was stretched – like the waistband on Andrew’s elasticated slacks – to breaking point when it came to obtaining tickets for Waiting For Godot.

The Whingers had talked about seeing it on tour before it came to the Theatre Royal Haymarket but just didn’t get around to it, there being no teams of horses wild enough to drag Phil back into the provinces.

So the Whingers decided to call in a few favours. But it’s funny how people who “owed them one” suddenly suddenly stopped returning their calls. One (and he knows who he is) went as far as laughing in Phil’s face. Imagine that.

Things were getting desperate.

Phil hatched a plan to get elected as an MP, fork out cash to a tout and charge it as an expense, disguising it amidst his general ornamental duck house-related receipts if necessary. Andrew even considered the possibility of stalking and then seducing someone connected with the show, perhaps in a ghastly travesty of  Mrs Robinson. But Phil believed this plan was likely to go tits-up by the time it got to the soft music and négligée and probably long before that.