The 39 Steps

Writing credits for this amusing four-hander production of The 39 Steps are given to the book's author, John Buchan , and Patrick Barlow (he of National Theatre of Brent) "from an original concept by Simon Corble and Nobby Dimon". Strangely it makes no mention of Charles Bennett or Ian Hay whose work , as adaptor and dialogue writer of Hitchcock's 1935 film, most of this production is based on. Directed by Maria Aitken (bizarrely), this is an amusing production with a great cast (Rupert Degas, Charles Edwards, Catherine McCormack and Simon Gregor) and some inventive staging. Great value for money too - we managed to get a What's On Stage two-for-one offer which worked out at £7.50 a seat. You can't complain at that, can you? Apart from the fact that the theatre seemed to be running a bizarre two-tier system of seat allocation. If you paid full-price, you got a numbered seat. If you didn't, you had to arrive early or wander round the theatre looking for somewhere to sit. This system naturally results in lots of single seats scattered around the theatre which was hopeless if you had come as a party of two or more. What is this thing about unallocated seating? It's the worst thing about visiting the otherwise excellent Soho Theatre and new heights to this policy were experienced at an otherwise enjoyable visit to see Bill Bailey at the Battersea Arts Centre where the tickets had seat numbers on them but the seats didn't. I mean, for heaven's sake. How much money are they saving by not putting numbers on the seats or the tickets (or both)? It's like flying with easyjet or Ryanair - it really can't be the lack of allocated seating that lets them fly you at rock bottom prices. It just seems to be designed to make the whole experience more miserable than it need be. Stop it at once. Top tips

• Pre-theatre: The Small & Beautiful restaurant 351 Kilburn High Road does an edible two course menu for £5.50 Mon-Thurs. You can't say fairer than that.

Brasil Brasileiro - wasn't nuts about it

Phil and Andrew had a well-deserved night off from the theatre yesterday evening but sent along acolyte Jarlath and his companion Angela in their stead. Here's what he had to say... Did anyone else see Brasil Brasileiro? Am I crying in the wilderness. Angela bailed out at the interval and went home to do the ironing. Brasil Brasileiro was dire. If Kylie thinks this is good dance she needs to get out more. It was shockingly amateurish like a a bad tourist cabaret on a cheap cruise liner. It was lowest common denominator stuff and it really rankles that they think they have to dumb down dance to reach a mass audience. What they need to do is just present good dance. They had an appalling band who were out of tune and two ageing cabaret stars (dressed in black on a bare black stage!) were singing flat and seemed to be oblivious to the fact that the band weren't with them. I've never seen anything like it. I've heard better singing at hoolies at home Ireland, at least there everyone can sing in tune. The choice of music was also second rate. From a country which produced Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Astrid Gilberto, Antonio Carlos Jobim, this was unforgivable. It would be like representing British music abroad by using Des O'Connor. The dancing was really community group level (like some dreary festival that Hackney council would dream up) and at one stage this couple did a lambada which was off the beat. I know middle aged English people who can dance a lamabada on the beat so was horrified. London used to have (still has I think) a number of lambada schools where amateurs produce a level of dance which is far superior to what was in this show. Passing this off as the best of Brazilian dance was criminal. The whole show looked really under-rehearsed but the main problem was not so much the lack of talent of the cast and the basic flaw in its conception. The show was devised by Claudio Segovia who created Tango Argentino, Flamenco Puro and Black & Blue, all of which were fabulous. What unites those three of course is that that they took as their starting point very strong vernacular dance forms and he brought together exponents of these dances who were at the top of their profession. The problem with this Brazilian nonsense is that there really isn't a dance called "samba", so there isn't anything to hang the show on. It's all too diffuse. Samba schools are about teaching street dance for Mardi Gras but there is no really defined steps so it's a loose cover all term for varieties of street dance which have echoes of jitterbug, salsa, lambada, hip hop (the Samba dance in European Latin American dance competitions is a totally different and European invented dance). This is all fine, if it's well done but it's party dancing and while it can be fun and looks embarrassing on a professional stage. I'm not saying the dance has to be artistically pure it just has to be coming from somewhere. All the women in this show were just decorative and didn't really have any steps, they just kept up with the men who threw them around. The look of the piece was also very interesting. They all looked really trendy (in today's terms) which meant all the men were in sporty gear and all the women looked like hookers. I could write another essay on the sexual politics of the piece, but I won't!. The place for this show was the streets of Notting Hill Carnival not Sadlers Wells. Of course the audience loved it and clapped loudly and stamped their feet but as PT Barnum said "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the general public".

Titus Andronicus - more gore than bore

Be warned. For a play with a reputation for over-the-top gore, Titus Andronicus at the South Bank's Shakespeare's Globe has an awful lot of words in it too. Andrew thinks it may have been the verbiage rather than the fake blood that resulted in so many groundlings to be escorted from the theatre by concerned-looking ushers. In fact, he was tempted to feign faintness himself more than once in the first half. To be fair, Andrew has to confess that he doesn't really do Shakespeare very well. He finds the effort of listening so hard rather wearing and his mind tends to wander, so - as Elizabethan and Jacobean drama goes - Titus A is a relatively attractive proposition what with there being so much on-stage death, amputation, cannibalism &c. Half-helpfully, the programme (a relative bargain at £3.00 with lots of interesting information in it. Take note West End & esp. Theatre Royal Haymarket) has a plot synopsis which selectively outlined the action, although many of the finer points were glossed over, so perhaps Andrew wasn't the only one struggling with the many words. The first half is a bit too Shakespearean, with Douglas Hodge (Titus) doing quite a lot of that declaiming thing, but in the second half - when the tragedy ascends into farce - the whole thing lightens and is played with both eyes on the laughs which is much more enjoyable. Frankly, the time began to fly by. Particularly entertaining is Shaun Parkes ("Aaron, a Moor") who got the only spontaneous applause of the evening, but Geraldine Alexander as Tamora and Laura Rees as Lavinia also deserve plaudits, the latter deserving an Olivier award for "Best post-double-hand-amputation and tongue extraction performance" if there is such a thing (and if there isn't, there should be). Other high points include the styling of Tamara's Goth sons who look as though they are moonlighting in matinee performances of Cats and didn't quite have time to get all the slap off before the curtain went up on Titus A. But anyway, Andrew has to confess that this turned out to be a fantastic evening. Seeing a show at The Globe is an amazing experience and this show has a lot to commend it. Andrew hears that The Globe is branching out from Shakespeare so if you can't stomach three hours of words, look out for something else. And his tip for the directors of The Globe is: Go for it. Andrew would pay very good money to see Kiss Me Kate here. Perfect. In the meantime, some coping strategies:

• Don't be a groundling unless you are really poor or really absorbed by words.
• Fork out the extra £1 to hire a cushion. The benches are hard and the evening is long
• You can take your cup of wine into the theatre (Andrew was gutted not to find this out until the interval)

Evita - £55 is a lot of money for a dodgy old repeat

The show opens with evocative newsreel footage of Eva Peron's funeral procession - thousands of Argentinians line the streets of Buenos Aires, weeping and wailing. The drama continues onstage when about a dozen of the chorus endeavour to reproduce the splendour on the stage. Andrew hasn't laughed so much in years. Not since the French & Saunders "my dead baby" extras sketch to which it evidently paid homage. Then they all clutch at a crucifix held aloft by a priest (-cum-chorus boy) while dramatically lit from below by a spot that casts dramatic shadows on the backdrop. Oooh. Well, Phil thought it was quite dramatic but Andrew was too preoccupied wondering where the light was supposed to be coming from to be drawn in. All this and we're not five minutes in. Quite an amusing beginning to the £55 and 200 minutes of wine time invested (£110 and 400 minutes if you look at it holistically). But it's pretty much downhill from then on. As Phil pointed out, more time has elapsed since the original Evita than it had between Eva Peron shuffling off her mortal coil and ALW bringing her carcass to the London stage. And it shows. Rather horrible seventies sung-through rock opera although to be fair this has more tunes than your average ALW show. And he's obviously pleased with them because they get used over and over again (I think if one were being kind one would use the terms "leitmotif" and "reprise" but there's not much inclination towards kindness coming from our seats). Was Elena Roger worthy of the hype? Well, she's got a decent voice and she's very small which had some potential comedic value when she descended the steps onto the balcony for her Big Number - for a moment it looked as if she wasn't going to be able see over the balcony and we were in for a Morecambe and Wise moment. But the problem is her rather rich accent. Terribly authentic of course, but we could only make out about 50% of the words - and we knew the words to Don't Cry For Me, Argentina anyway. So we could probably only make out about 25% of the words we didn't know. Anyway, the show was rather stolen from under her by a character called "Mistress" in the programme (played by one Lorna Want) who appears for five minutes in Act 1 to sing the showstopping number (Another Suitcase in Another Hall) before disappearing never to be seen again. Peculiar construction for a musical indeed. The last half of Act 2 drags rather thanks to some uninspiring songs (including the one written for the film version) and Andrew was rather relieved when Eva finally pegged it. Anyway, if Lorna Want ("Mistress") ever takes over from Elena Roger, then that's the time to go. That's our advice. In the meantime, judging by the distinctly unpacked house we predict there will be offers in the offing so you won't have to pay £55 for the privilege of seeing this rather creaky revival. It's still 200 minutes of your wine time though. Think on't.

You don't solve a problem like Maria this way, that's for sure

Well, that was a promising show for two weeks. Who wants to keep watching now shop-girl-naif Brianey has gone? I can't tell the remaining Marias apart, with the exception of the rather arrogant one whose name escapes me. ALW asked Brianey (I really must find out how to spell that name) if she thought that at 16 she was old enough to be a West End star? Well, Mr LW it's only a week ago that you were ranting on about how Maria was always played by actresses too old to play the "girl" that Maria clearly is. You're asking the wrong question: it's not whether she's the right age for a West End star; it's whether she's the right age to be Maria. Of course, Brianey had to go; she's the delightful underdog who would have charmed BBC viewers into putting her through every week. Too high a risk for someone who's going to have to do eight (sorry, six. see previous post) shows a week. To be honest, I don't care who gets it now. The ten that are left are just not interesting. I hope Brianey gets her own show. I'd pay good money to see her in The King's Head; not so sure about paying to see any of the others in SOM.

How do you solve a problem like booking for The Sound of Music?

Well, it's all very well ALW making a big fuss on TV about finding a Maria for the new production of The Sound of Music but buyer beware! In the first edition of How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria, the cat was let truly out of the bag with a slip of the tongue by one of the judges emphasising that the successful Maria would have to perform at least six performances a week. At least? What does that mean? Six? Eight? Seven? Which ones? If you buy a ticket now, will you see the winner or not? Do tell. And is this now the standard? Just turn up when you can, love. Don't worry about it. We'll send someone else on if you don't feel up to acting like a professional. And another thing. How come this programme is all about being able to sing? Is the acting something you can fudge your way through in a few weeks? If so, those poor bastards sweating their way through two years of acting school should be told. And so should we.