Deathtrap – The Opening Night

[Note: this is really not worth reading unless you were there. Sorry. It’s mainly an aide memoire to ourselves]

Biggins must have had other plans. But gosh – even the Whingers had other plans. But happily the first preview of Blood and Gifts at the National got cancelled enabling the Whingers to sweep back to the Noel Coward Theatre for the opening night of Deathtrap. Happily Sir Nicholas of Hytner could now also attend and he did so with Samuel Barnett in tow.

And it seemed that everyone else in showbizzland had a gaping hole in their diaries too. Andrew’s alleged prosopagnosia was stretched further than some of the more “enhanced” famous faces on display. And his recognitions skills were not aided by the fact that he doesn’t do much in the way of telly so it was left to Phil to peer through his lorgnettes to fill in the blanks.

Review – Small Change at the Donmar Warehouse

To be fair, Small Change at the Donmar Warehouse was never going to be the Whingers’ cup of cabernet.

We are easily enough confused as it is and Andrew’s memory plays enough tricks on him as it is without the added complication of plays getting in on the game.

It also didn’t help that – thanks to the swathes of poetic, descriptive monologues – Andrew spent most of Act 1 vacillating between oblivion and semi-wakefulness (but mostly the former). During his dozing, he had very strange dreams which on waking he believed momentarily to have been part of the play. In a strange way, writer/director Peter Gill might rather have approved.