Review – Accidental Death of an Anarchist, Tanya Moiseiwitsch Playhouse, Sheffield, 24th September 2022

Posted on September 27, 2022 by therealchrisparkle

Where have the last 42 years gone? I remember seeing Accidental Death of an Anarchist back in 1980 at Wyndham’s in London as if it was yesterday (well, maybe a month ago.) I remember how it entranced me with its flagrant disregard for all the usual rules of West End comedy. I remember how it made me laugh my head off from start to finish. And I remember how it prompted me to write to Gavin Richards, who had adapted, directed and starred in it, telling him of my own family’s recent unjust and unfair brush with the law, knowing that our frustration and anger would fall on sympathetic ears. I’m still waiting for a reply on that one, mind. One of the great things about this play is how it can be moulded to reflect the issues of the day. As long as you have the one accepted constant – which is that police corruption is used to cover up their mistakes/crimes/lies/ineptitude/miscarriages of justice (feel free to add to the list) – then everything else can just neatly fall into place.

Tom Basden’s adaptation of Dario Fo’s original play, at what was the Crucible Studio but is now the newly renamed Tanya Moiseiwitsch Playhouse (that’ll quickly become just the Playhouse, mark my words) firmly places the action in the UK in 2022. I slightly regretted the almost complete eradication of all things Italian from this new version, which includes the way that Dario Fo got his characters to question Fo’s own inadequacies as a writer – so funny in the original. The Maniac used to proudly boast of his supposed association with the University of Padua; now he is (allegedly) an alumnus of Wadham College, Oxford. And with the recent electoral success of La Fascista Meloni as Italian Prime Minster, maybe they missed a trick.

Nevertheless, this British version still works fine, with a full panoply of the methods the British police employ to cover their collective a*ses still rigidly in place. Fear of the media, fear of losing one’s pension and fear of getting found out still rule the roost. Whilst there’s a police WhatsApp group somewhere on this earth, Accidental Death of an Anarchist is not going away. And there’s still a call to action at the end of the play, in true Fo style, with websites and QR codes for the audience to download and explore at their post-show leisure. Remember, it was Fo who created the whole idea of Can’t Pay Won’t Pay for when capitalism just gets too big for its boots.

Fo’s original 1970 play was inspired by the death of an anarchist railway worker, Giuseppe Pinelli, who “fell” from a police headquarters window in Milan. Apparently, the window was already open (it was midnight on a freezing cold night). Apparently, he jumped (the autopsy showed he sustained an injury to the nape of his neck during his fall). Apparently, one officer tried to hold him back and ended up with one shoe in his hand (he was wearing two shoes when he landed). Apparently, they lied. Using appropriately anarchic humour, the ridiculous excuses of the law fall away before our eyes; as a result, what is in reality a truly horrific killing by the police becomes a hilarious, nonsensical farce on stage highlighting their corruption.

The performance we saw was only the second preview, so please take that into account, gentle reader, although I doubt there is much space for last minute changes in the production. Anna Reid has created a stark but functional fourth floor office – later to become a third floor office by means of a pen and some window shenanigans. Tom Basden’s adaptation has fifty years of police corruption to mock; the longer the time since it was first written, the more corruption there is to play with, I guess. By necessity, this police force hasn’t espoused technology to the extent they might have, because nothing looks more extravagant than loose sheets of paper in a file being flung into the air. Given the farcical unpredictability of the body of the play, Basden gives us a relatively straightforward conclusion, whereas Fo gave us two alternative endings, with the Maniac asking the audience which of them they would prefer. But the whole show is full of brilliant theatrical tricks, right from the beginning when the opening music is turned off, to the “reappearance” of the Maniac at the end – and to say more about them would just spoil it for you.

It’s a tour de force by Daniel Rigby, who gives a terrific performance as the Maniac, adopting various guises, voices and personae in his quest to befuddle the police (to be fair, not that difficult a job with this lot). It’s a very demanding role, but he squeaks so many brilliant comic moments out of the most minor opportunities, that he’s a joy to watch. I particularly liked Jordan Metcalfe as the clearly guilty detective Daisy, shiftily avoiding gaze and readily agreeing to clutch at half-baked straws. Tony Gardner is excellent as the outwardly respectable Superintendent, with an unscrupulous ability to forget whether he was there or not, depending on where there was or what he was doing there at the time. Ruby Thomas is great as the journalist Fi Phelan, defending her inherited wealth by admitting to owning only one horse and reading The Guardian, and there’s terrific support from Howard Ward as the exasperated Inspector Burton and Shane David-Joseph as the unintelligent Constable Joseph.

As relevant and as telling as ever, the play can still make you hoot with laughter yet be aghast at its subject matter. A glorious mixture of silly and serious, and still a classic of 20^th century drama. A must-see!

Five Alive, Let Theatre Thrive!

Review – Noises Off, Garrick Theatre, 27th December 2019

Posted on January 3, 2020 by therealchrisparkle

Some shows never go away. Sometimes that can be regrettable; sometimes remarkable; on a few occasions, totally wonderful. Noises Off, I’m delighted to say, falls into that third category. Michael Frayn’s marvellous farce, that never progresses our hapless cast of TV B-listers past the first act of Robin Housemonger’s clearly pathetic Nothing On, stars TV’s Dotty “I can ‘ardly ‘old me lolly up” Otley – and she’s sunk her life savings into this “investment”. Will she get a return on her risk? Will she buffalo.

The date – 15^th April 1982; I had a front row seat at the Savoy for the newly opened Noises Off, starring Paul Eddington and Patricia Routledge; and I thought it was one of the funniest things I’d ever seen or was ever likely to see. Four years later, and still at the Savoy, I introduced young Miss Duncansby (now Mrs Chrisparkle) to the joys of Stephanie Cole and Hugh Paddick in the cast; from then till now, we still love to intone our own posh-voiced ladies and gentlemen, would you please take your seats, as the performance will begin in one minute instructions, at the drop of a hat, whenever the moment sees fit. In 2008 we saw it again at the Milton Keynes Theatre, with Maggie Steed on fine form, and it had lost none of its spark. And now it’s back again, and so are we, revelling both in the comedy of today and the nostalgia of yesteryear.

And it’s great to see that the cast of TV’s On the Zebras has-beens is still as useless as ever. At first we see them struggling through the Dress (“we’re all thinking of it as the Tech, Lloyd love”) Rehearsal before the opening at the Grand Theatre, Weston-super-Mare; then we see them at daggers with each other during a vengeful midweek matinee at the Theatre Royal, Goole; and finally in exhausted devastation during the final performance at the Municipal Theatre, Stockton on Tees.

Nothing On is clearly a dreadful little play, the last vestiges of the mildly titillating sex comedy genre that soared in the 60s and 70s with masterpieces (and I mean that) like Boeing Boeing, No Sex Please We’re British and There’s a Girl in my Soup. Today these have dated very badly – and in fact the recently planned tour of Boeing Boeing has had to be cancelled due to poor advance sales. Shame really, as it’s an exceptionally funny and beautifully structured play. I daresay Feydeau would have struggled to get bums on seats if he was writing nowadays. When Noises Off first hit the stage in 1982, that style was already on the way out, but still familiar, and thus ripe for Frayn to satirise mercilessly. I would not be remotely surprised if any twenty-something theatregoers seeing Noises Off today hadn’t got a clue as to what Nothing On was all about.

Apart from taking the mick out of those old sex comedies, Noises Off assembles a relatively ghastly cast of creative types with recognisable foibles, weaknesses, idiosyncrasies and so on. The faux-polite leading lady, the tense and irritable ingénu, the arrogant director, the well-meaning buffoon, the old sot; they’re all there, thrust together in a survival battle. And this creates Noises Off’s great strength; it’s utterly hilarious. Every possible theatrical disaster that could befall that woeful cast happens with dire consequences; to anyone who’s ever been on a stage it’s your worst nightmare come true. Physical pratfalls, mental and physical violence, drunk colleagues, nosebleeds, missing/not working/broken props/scenery, inappropriate affairs and jealous lovers all vie for prominence. And, whilst on the face of it, you might suspect it would be too forced, too unreal, too slapstick, too unsubtle to be taken seriously – in fact it’s such a superb piece of writing, requiring a high level of choreographically excellent performance, that only the most sour-faced misery-guts wouldn’t bellow with laughter ecstatically through it. That second Act, in particular, is simply a perfect nugget of comic genius. I was slightly sorry that this current production, directed by Jeremy Herrin, has done away with the visual “duck” joke in Act Two. If you remember it from previous productions, I’m sure you’d too be disappointed that it’s missing. If you’ve never seen it before then I’ll not explain it – suffice to say that it can be made even funnier.

Although it’s a play that’s always attracted star performers, there are few plays that require greater ensemble skills and attitude, and the cast do indeed throw everything at it to make it succeed. Meera Syal plays Dotty as a rather sweet old thing, until her anger is riled, that is; Lloyd Owen’s Director Lloyd is a sorely-tried, hard-nosed kind of guy – very tired, very unhappy and more acerbic than I remember from previous productions. Lisa McGrillis emphasises all of Brooke’s vacant automaton acting to terrific effect, and there’s very nice support from Adrian Richards as the long-suffering Tim, the Stage Manager. But, for me, the best characterisations come from Sarah Hadland as the kindly and impossibly positive Belinda Blair, and Daniel Rigby as the tongue-tied, gently seething Garry Lejeune.

It’s the perfect show for a holiday season; strenuously funny, and with plenty of excellent performances to admire; and you can pick and choose just how much you want to extrapolate from it about the nature of human existence to the extent that you can be bothered. Consider it deep, or consider it shallow, there’s loads to enjoy here, and I’m glad we caught it again before it closes on 4^th January.

Production photos by Helen Maybanks

Review – One Man Two Guvnors, New Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham, 22nd October 2011

Posted on October 24, 2011 by therealchrisparkle

We booked this on 26th May because the word coming out of the National Theatre was that this was a smasheroony. Five months on and you don’t need me to tell you this is a fantastically funny show with some extraordinary feats of physical comedy. It already boasts a great reputation, and its West End transfer is assured of success. It’s not perfect – but so refreshingly laugh inducing that it doesn’t matter.

Written by Richard Bean (whose The Big Fellah I thought was the best new play of last year), it’s an adaptation of Carlo Goldoni’s 1746 Commedia dell’Arte based “Servant of Two Masters”. It’s now set in Brighton in 1963, amongst a criminal underworld of petty thieves and villains getting bumped off. The plot is highly silly but highly entertaining, totally incredible and so enjoyable that you’re completely happy to suspend all reasonable disbelief. It’s a script full of character, chock full with hilarious happenings and good jokes, and I reckon it deserves to earn Mr Bean enough to retire on (although let’s hope he doesn’t).

James Corden’s central performance is astonishingly athletic for a big chap. He plays Francis Hensall, who blunders his way into working for two guvnors who must remain a secret from each other; but of course he confuses their jobs and this leads him up all sorts of farcical garden paths. With terrific comic timing, and a super rapport with the audience whom he both takes into his confidence but also hoodwinks too, he’s simply a joy to watch. At times he appears to come out of character and address the audience directly as himself, in a manner I haven’t seen since the good old days of Eric Sykes and Jimmy Edwards in Big Bad Mouse (if you go back that far). This is very nicely subversive of standard theatrical practice, and feels very refreshing.

The final scene before the interval will probably go down in history as one of the most hilarious ever seen on stage. Suffice it to say, not everything is at seems, but it culminates in one of the most astonishing coups de theatre you’re ever likely to witness. Of the three apparent interactions with members of the audience, throughout the whole play, I’m pretty sure only one is 100% genuine, If You Get My Drift. But it’s all carried off with amazing aplomb, that you only admire James Corden’s performance the more for it.

He has excellent support from a gifted company of comic actors. Oliver Chris is excellent as one of his guvnors, Stanley, an ineffectual toff using posh expletives but who can be a thug when he wants. I also loved the performance of Daniel Rigby as Alan, the wannabe actor fiancé of Claire Lams’ Pauline, the thick daughter of local gangland boss Charlie. His pompous posing makes such an effective contrast with the cockney vagabonds around him, and her innocent stupidity is another great comic element. And then you have the scene stealing performance of Tom Edden as Alfie, the ancient waiter, whose hands seem to have become detached from his arms and whose entire physical presence is a ridiculous delight. If you thought Julie Walters’ “two soups” waitress was past it, you’ve seen nothing yet!

To be honest, the whole cast puts heart and soul into it and there isn’t a weak link. On the matinee performance we saw, Fred Ridgeway, as Charlie, seemed to corpse in almost every scene, so that when other actors came on stage to join in they tended to be thrown of course by his apparent inability to stay calm! Naturally, this only added to the general hilarity.

My only gripe – and it’s minor – is that the music that runs through the show slightly puts the brakes on the activity. The performance starts with the (very enjoyable) skiffle group doing four songs, concert style. Whilst I appreciate it can take a while for everyone to settle down (and it takes an inordinate amount of time at the Alex in Birmingham to get from street to seat) I did feel it was too much. When the fourth song started I asked Mrs Chrisparkle if she thought the show was ever going to get going. The group also sings while the staging is getting changed between scenes. Sometimes, cast members join the group for eccentric solos, which is very funny, but I still felt it made the whole thing a little less fluid than it could be. Very minor gripe though.

This is definitely, as they used to say, going to run and run. A top notch comedy performed by a dream team. I don’t envy the producers’ problem of recasting once this lot have had enough.