There’s an awful lot of earnest analysis of the theatre: the blogosphere is crammed with the stuff. But the West End Whingers swim satirically against this tide of dullness and concern themselves with the frivolous and the peripheral – the décor, the bar, the loos.
The Whingers are Phil and Andrew (no surnames given), and their bias is made plain: the proscenium is in, the traverse is out. Puppets are out. Fringe theatre is also out because it’s in Zone 2 “or worse”. With scant regard for the niceties of criticism, or indeed of performance, their stated aim is to figure out whether it’s “worth missing the Merlot for the Marlowe;” they eschew the star-rating system, and use instead glasses of wine.
The WEW’s were inspired to take up blogging when they found themselves at the Apollo theatre, watching Fool for Love (“fools for paying”) and thought they would take their bitching further than the bar. They shot to fame earlier this year after dubbing the Lloyd-Webber Phantom sequel, “Paint Never Dries” – by all accounts His Lordliness was most put out. A London set designer has apparently called them “underachieving sad cocks”.
One of my favourite reviews of theirs has to be of the Nigerian Death and the King’s Horseman at the National, done in the style of an email scammer:
If you put on in the UK this play could earn $12
trillion (TWELVE TRILLION DOLLARS) for the right
theatre and that is why I write to you.If put on in the UK with a big trusted director
like Mr Rufus Norris perhaps the people of London
will pay as much as £10 (TEN POUNDS) to see it, especially
if it is put on with dancing and sweeping and DRUMMING.
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