Review – The Importance of Being Earnest – A New Musical, Riverside Studios

Yes, it sounds so wrong in oh so many ways doesn’t it?

The Importance of Being Earnest as a musical? But then again (and we know we really should have tried harder) the Whingers’ curiosity wasn’t even piqued enough by Ann Widdecombe’s panto debut to drag them to Dartford this season. But Gyles Brandreth giving his Lady Bracknell? This proved a USP big enough to brave the trek to Hammersmith’s Riverside Studios.

Dragged-up Lady Bs are of course nothing new. Brian Bedford has recently delivered one on Broadway, Geoffrey Rush is giving his down under. Heavens, Phil saw the brilliant Hinge and Bracket as Miss Prism and Lady B respectively at the then Whitehall Theatre. Mind you, it was execrable.

And this could so easily have turned out to go the same way but remarkably it is in fact really rather good.

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.

Review – Pygmalion, Chichester Festival Theatre

In the words of Fred Ebb, “The world goes round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round”.

As Eagle-eyed readers will know, over the last four years the Whingers have seen every play and musical ever written and are having to begin all over again. We digested our second Assassins only the other day.

And yesterday, what should appear on the great theatrical merry-go-round,with all the dignity it is possible to muster on a giant chicken rising and falling to the self-parodying tones of a steam organ, but George Bernard Shaw‘s Pygmalion.

Hare-Brained: The 4th Annual West End Whingers Party 2010

Here’s yet another post that you should not read unless you were actually there. In which case, a big THANK YOU from the Whingers for making the 4th Annual West End Whingers Party a swinging success (as far as we can remember).

Happily, we reckon to have raised exactly £373.85 for the Theatre MAD charity so a big thank you to everyone for digging deep into your pockets.

For the record:

We wore: The Whingers dressed appropriately for the over-complicated them: Hair (the-Musical)/Hare-brained/David Hare/hair (the outgrowth of filamentous cells containing keratin growing from follicles found in the dermis). Those who witnessed it might consider our full sixties garb, inappropriate perhaps even undignified. But the Whingers were content to be the oldest swingers in town for charity (Phil of course was the oldest swinger in town).

We ate: Stalkers Crisps in nine enticing flavours including “Hammy with Pammy”, “They’re very pickled” and “They’re no spring chickens”, all hugely overpriced to make you feel as though you really were at the theatre.

We drank: Probably more than we should.

Who came: Samantha Bond. Briefly. Accidentally. She was on her way to the toilet actually.