All good parties should have someone along to insult the host, and Charles Dance fitted the bill perfectly when he read out some of his own bad reviews while receiving the best actor award at yesterday’s Critics Circle bash.

He reminded me of the film hunk Victor Mature who, on being refused admission to a nightclub on the grounds of being an actor, protested that he was no such thing and had the reviews to prove it.

Dance read out verdicts by myself, Charles Spencer and Robert Gore-Langton to the effect that he was no good in Chekhov, stiff as a board and dull as mud.

I see no reason why we should either rescind, or apologise for, these opinions and while I am delighted (well, fairly pleased) that Dance won the award for a decent performance in Shadowlands, I can set his mind at rest by assuring him that I did not vote for him.

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On January 28 Whatsonstage.com took 150 Theatregoer club members to see the National Theatre’s acclaimed production of Much Ado About Nothing. Directed by Nicholas Hytner and starring Simon Russell Beale and Zoe Wanamaker, the production has become one of this seasons hottest tickets. Our Theatregoers were able to enjoy a free drink during the interval and were lucky enough to be offered the last minute opportunity to attend a post show Q&A with principal cast members.

We had an overwhelming response to this Outing, with all 150 tickets selling out to club members in a matter of days. The rush was well deserved and an enjoyable evening was had by all.

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Mike Leigh’s last film, Vera Drake, was a study in saintliness, with Imelda Staunton as a do-gooding back street abortionist in post-war, pre-liberated London. His new film, Happy-Go-Lucky, is also about the milk of human kindness, which runs through the veins of a cheerful, jokey primary school teacher played by the effervescent, miraculously funny Sally Hawkins.

The film doesn’t open here until April, with a European film festival premiere in Berlin in two weeks’ time. But without preempting the critics, it’s safe to say that Leigh is back in primary colour mood, and the central relationship between the daffy teacher and her bonkers driving instructor — a brilliant, pent-up performance by Eddie Marsan, the sheepish neighbour in Vera Drake — is going to become a classic in the Leigh catalogue.

At a special weekend screening I sat next to Matthew Warchus who astonished me with his workload. He still keeps an eye on Lord of the Rings, of course, but he’s also directing Speed-the-Plow at the Old Vic, the new Yasmina Reza, The Carnage of God, with Ralph Fiennes, and preparing Boeing-Boeing with Mark Rylance for Broadway.

And just so he doesn’t take it easy when he gets home, he and his wife, Lauren Ward, last seen on stage as the svelte baroness in The Sound of Music, now have a four-year old, a two-year old — and one more on the way.

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It is sometimes said of a certain kind of celebrity that he, she, or Biggins, would turn up for the opening of an envelope. The Press conference equivalent was the sparse turn-out of hacks for the announcement on Friday afternoon of a performance at the Fortune Theatre later this year of The Woman in Black — for one week only…in Japanese!

Director Robin Herford, who has been associated with the play since its premiere in 1992, stated categorically that he was a firm believer in the extending of international links. And that was as good as it got.

To be fair — just for a change, and against my better judgement — several of us had been lured thither by canny PR Ben Chamberlain with the promise of a plateful of sushi to soak up the champagne across the road at The Stage’s annual party in the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.

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Two plays on successive nights, The Vertical Hour by David Hare and The Sea by Edward Bond, have overlapping histories. Both were directed by Sam Mendes (the first in New York, the second at the National). And the Bond originated on the Royal Court stage where the Hare has just opened.

The Hare piece is cleanly, sparely presented in a way that the Bond was originally by Bill Gaskill thirty-five years ago. The Royal Court aesthetic, influenced greatly by the visit of the Berliner Ensemble to London in 1956, the same year as Look Back in Anger, is one of performance in the cause of meaning. Jonathan Kent is a highly intelligent director, but for once his antennae have been skewed in his production of The Sea at the Haymarket. It’s over-wrought and over-designed.

We shall see how the new Rose at Kingston works out later this week, but I loved Peter Hall’s phrase about the rake, that it “presents” the actor to the audience. That’s how the Court’s stage works, too. And of course the fact that the best shows there have minimal designs does not mean there is no design at all.

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On January 21 Whatsonstage.com took 175 Theatregoers to the Theatre Royal to see director Jonathan Kent’s production of Edward Bond’s  modern classic The Sea. All of our Theatregoers received a free programme on arrival and were able to enjoy their free drink as they settled down to watch Eileen Atkins and David Haig tackle this delightfully dark comedy.

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Sir Peter Hall was looking almost like his old self at the Rose Theatre press conference to announce his hand-over to Stephen Unwin. He’s shrunk a bit, and he’s lost a kidney — I think he’s been a lot less well than he’s been giving out –  but otherwise he’s also lost the recent appearance of a giant gnarled old sea lion looking for a shoal of fish to devour.

He invited the journalists to follow him onto the stage of the Rose; there’s a slight rake now which will “present” the actor more easily to the audience and there’s no disputing the extraordinary intimacy now achieved without losing the epic proportions.

Unwin claimed that, as about twenty per cent of the acting profession lived nearby, there would always be a queue of South London’s finest at the casting sessions. This reminded me of Robert Atkins declaring on the opening night of the Regent’s Park Theatre, as he indicated the greensward of the acting area: “Every sod on this stage comes from Richmond.”

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In mid-March the RSC will perform all eight plays of Shakespeare’s two tetralogies in chronological order in less than 72 hours, and all this with the same cast. I’m going to write about the experience of seeing this full cycle being performed, and you’ll be able to read about it in this blog. It’s going to be an exhausting few days for everyone, audience and cast alike, and should finally answer the question if you can ever have too much Shakespeare; my opinion has always been that you can’t, but I suppose I might possibly change my mind after this massive dose.

Time will be short on the days when they’re doing three plays on the same day, there’s 80 minutes between “Henry IV part 1” and “Henry IV part 2”, and then only 70 minutes between “Henry IV part 2” and “Henry V”, if the listed time for each production is correct, and it looks very similar for the three parts of “Henry VI”. I hope to be able to post on each play before the next one starts, but those 70 minutes look very, very tight indeed, as I also need to fit dinner into that equation, plus the minutes it’ll take me to get to where I’m staying and then back again, so we’ll see if it works out, otherwise some posts will be slightly delayed. I suppose it’s too much to hope for that there might actually be a wireless network near the theatre that I could log onto, as that would save quite a bit of time, but who knows.

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One of my favourite almost-local north London cinemas is the Phoenix in East Finchley and I attended last night a special gala screening of the Coen Brothers’ new movie, No Country for Old Men. This was no country for weak hearts.

It is an absolute masterpiece, not least in its subversion of all the Western movie conventions, but also in its realism, its sustained tension, its photography and its performances.

Tommy Lee Jones as the gnarled old sherriff with a conscience, Javier Bardem as the baddest psychopath in cinema history and Josh Brolin as the Vietnam vet who gets caught up in the abandoned stash of a drugs heist massacre, all deserve Oscars. And our own Scottish actress Kelly MacDonald shows up superbly as Brolin’s wife. 

Local Phoenix regulars Juliet Stevenson and League of Gentlemen’s Steve Pemberton were on hand to  support the re-launch campaign — new cafe, more facilities, an expanded education programme — in a build up to the centenary in 1910.

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Announcing the National Theatre plans for 2008 today, Nicholas Hytner told a Press conference that the current situation regarding the proposed Arts Council England cuts in funding was a terrible mess, ill thought through and unfair.

He revealed that he had personally lobbied ACE on behalf of the Bush, the Northcott in Exeter and the National Student Drama Festival. He was not remotely satisfied with the justifications he had been given. 
 
With regard to the Northcott, where he worked early in his career, Hytner said the situation was similar to the threat to the Bristol Old Vic: the wrong people were being punished for any supposed faults in planning or policy. Those people were the audience the theatre serves. It was the Arts Council’s duty, he implied, to sort out the board and the management at such important regional venues.

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