Review – Derren Brown: Miracle, Palace Theatre

Ok, very late to the table with Derren Brown: Miracle (it finished on Saturday at The Palace but tours the country until July), but should we even talk about it anyway?

Mr Brown asks us not to reveal anything about the show. So what shall we talk about instead?

Review – Blithe Spirit starring Dame Angela Lansbury, Gielgud Theatre

Perhaps that should be Dame-elect.

As far as we know Angela Lansbury‘s still waiting to pick up her gong. But it’s well-timed. Charity gigs aside (Phil once saw her perform ‘Bosom Buddies’ with Bea Arthur), she’s not appeared on the London stage for almost 40 years. How canny of Palace officials to catch her while they can.

And gosh, we hadn’t seen post-show crowds outside a stage door like these for years. Presumably most are familiar with her from constant reruns of Murder, She Wrote rather than Gaslight, The Manchurian Candidate or her record number of Tony Award acting wins.

We watched it in mild amazement from the safety of The White Horse upstairs bar as a Mark Shenton look-alike tried to corral the throng seeping out from behind the crash barriers, to allow access for her car. Which, when it came, she entered, wound down the window and threw cheery waves on departing.

Let’s hope when she goes to the Palace she gets HMQ and not one of the second-stringers. They can have a wave-off.

Now, unless you’re connected to someone in the show or Biggins and get invited to the opening, there’s two ways for ordinary members of the public to get tickets for Blithe Spirit. You can either forgo a few luxuries and fork out up to £92.25, or you can do as we did and enjoy a morning sojourn playing Scrabble on the pavement outside the Gielgud Theatre and get one of the day seats for £10*.

Review – Yes, Prime Minister, Gielgud Theatre

The Whingers can be notoriously fickle.

After initial flickers of interest in seeing the Chichester transfer Yes, Prime Minister in its earlier incarnation, well you know how it is, other shows fluttered their seductive eyelids at us, dragged us knee-tremblingly up the West End back alleys and somehow it just dropped off our rather slipshod radar.

So it came and went and toured and came back again. Then it got shunted a couple of doors up Shaftesbury Avenue, presumably to fill the void left when Lend Me A Tenor took an early bath (hark at us using sporting metaphors!) and an opportunity presented itself, well to Phil at least as Andrew was experiencing other behind-the-scenes power shenanigans by Tinker Tailor Soldier Spying.

Review – When We Are Married, Garrick Theatre

You know you’re in good hands when the curtain rises and the set gets a round of applause.*

Simon Higlett‘s well-dressed Victorian sitting room drew gasps of admiration from the crowd, possibly because it brought back distant memories although presumably not from the Eastern Europeans or possibly Russians behind the Whingers with sweets wrapped in old Eastern Bloc cellophane which had been designed to be LOUDER when crinkled than the sad cellophane of the decadent West . WE WILL BURY YOU IN OUR CELLOPHANE.

But we digress. Having grappled with the Glaswegian accents in Men Should Weep last week it was comforting for the Whingers to head in a southerly direction and have their ears caressed by Yorkshire tongues. Phil’s mother was born in York (Nunnery Lane, since you asked) and he was oop there only a few weeks ago so it almost felt like home to him, only without old underpants strewn everywhere.