Review – Viva Forever, Piccadilly Theatre

We’ll tell you what we want, what we really, really want is a musical that doesn’t feature a gay character with a strange taste in clothing flouncing around the stage trying to get easy laughs just because he’s a camp queen. Stop right now thank you very much.

It’s currently endemic in London’s theatreland: in The BodyGuard and in Top Hat and now here in Viva Forever! We’re moving backwards faster than Merrily We Roll Along (which also features one).

This isn’t a return to the nineties, we’re back in the seventies. It seems to have become the comedy shorthand du jour in musicals. Maybe it’s time to redress the balance with a musicalisation of Brokeback Mountain?

Review – Chariots of Fire, Gielgud Theatre

A bit slow off the starting blocks with this one.

Anyway, a tip: don’t ask the ushers at Chariots of Fire if Mr Bean is appearing. At the first post-opening ceremony performance Phil checked but they had apparently been asked several times already.

Failing to obtain tickets for any Olympic events, this seemed the nearest alternative to try and get into the spirit of the games and Phil was intrigued: he’d been having a drink outside a hostelry near the Gielgud Theatre a few days earlier when a complete stranger came up and congratulated him on his performance in COF. Who could she mean? Most of the cast weren’t even born when that strangely over-awarded 1981 film came out which left a few of the more senior cast members. So Nicholas Grace or Simon Williams perhaps? Bizarre.

This West End transfer from the Hampstead Theatre was announced before it even opened there; so in some ways swifter than Mark Cavendish Lizzie Armitstead Wiggo.

Review: Two Birds And A Bloke, Pizza On The Park

The  Whingers are rarely offered owt fer nowt. But when it happens they are scrupulous about declaring their freebies.

Mind you, They have never had the luxury of having their swimming pools or moats freshened for nothing. Nor have they ever claimed for their ratcatchers or helipads. They guarantee that all maintenance of their drawbridges has come directly from their own pockets. They can’t even recall ever having owned (let alone sat on) a glittery loo seat although they may have occupied the occasional pouffe. But they would definitely sit in the stalls and chomp through their Maltesers at the taxpayers expense – given half a chance.

And we’re told we produce enough manure as it is without needing more of it for free.

So anyway it was a rare treat when the surely misguided people behind Jeff Harnar’s American Songbook in London invited the Whingers to see Two Birds And A Bloke at Pizza on the Park for free, gratis, like critics. Mind you, we paid for our own pizza and wine so we might as well have paid top whack for Priscilla.

Our dreams of “special guest” status were quickly punctured when we found ourselves placed at a table at the back. Andrew did some half-hearted moaning about not being able to see very well but it turned out to be this table or one behind a big plant. It turned out to be something of a blessing.