Tag Archives: Jeff Rawle

Review – Drop the Dead Donkey – The Reawakening! Festival Theatre, Chichester, 22nd February 2024

Posted on by

Unless you’re the super-youthful sort, you’ll probably remember Drop the Dead Donkey as the much-loved TV sitcom that ran from 1990 to 1998. Set in the studios of GlobeLink News, it was part newsroom-parody and part scathing satire; not only of the politicians of the day but also of the news industry itself. I remember it being highly popular; but for some reason Mrs Chrisparkle and I never watched it. So when it was announced that the old GlobeLink team were coming back to relive the good times in a UK tour, there were swathes of nostalgic delight around the country – but not chez nous. Nevertheless, our Chichester theatregoing companions Lord and Lady Prosecco, and Professor and Mrs Plum were keen to dip their toes in the nostalgia, and who were we to deny them that pleasure?

The premise is that Gus, the old GlobeLink boss, has taken charge at the brand new news channel, Truth News. Who better to staff the new station than all the old hands he used to work with? One by one we are reunited with editor George, deputy editor Dave, reporter – now newsreader – Damien, newsreader Sally, assistant editor Helen, and HR diva Joy. They are joined by intern “weathergirl” Rita and investigative journalist Mairead, and together they are tasked with getting Truth News off the ground and producing its first broadcasts.

This isn’t the first time a stage show has been created out of a television programme. Far from it. And usually, I have to say, it doesn’t do as well as the original. I remember seeing The Comedians at the London Palladium back in 1972; a ground-breaking TV programme as far as showing stand-up comedy was concerned, but it felt tedious watching it live. In recent years, there have been a couple of outings for stage versions of Yes Minister/Yes Prime Minister, TV series par excellence, but frankly dreadful on stage. Would the same fate befall a stage version of Drop the Dead Donkey?

The production looks great. Peter McKintosh’s set is the total embodiment of a brand spanking new flashy news set, all high-tech gadgetry and glistening chrome and steel. Peter Mumford’s lighting is spot on too, as are the costumes. A screen above the stage is used at times rapidly to scroll tweets of reaction to Truth News’ output – good and bad. It’s an effective device, but I was a little disappointed to realise that those tweets actually repeat themselves on a loop a few times – was it really so hard to create a few more well-constructed tweets to display?

Written by Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin, who also wrote the original sitcom, the show is updated regularly as real-life breaking news breaks. And there’s no doubt that the biggest laughs from the show come from some blistering up-to-date satirical jibes, deftly delivered by its talented cast. However, unfortunately, occasional blistering one-liners do not a play make, and the overall vibe of the show struck me as a bit lame. Without having the benefit of nostalgia to help my enjoyment of the show, I found it hard to warm to a set-up where the unsympathetic characters hugely outweigh the nice guys. Gus, Damien, Sally, Joy and Mairead are all genuinely awful people!And whilst there may be some Schadenfreude to be gained from seeing them get their come-uppance (if they do) it’s not enough to hang a play on. If the intention of the play is to mirror the birth and early days of GB News it achieves that pretty well; but I wonder if today’s news industry is so savage in its manipulation of our minds and peddling of its own agenda, that it’s almost beyond parody. Apart from seeing how the characters spark off each other, there’s very little in the way of “plot”; and I’m sorry to say I thought it had an embarrassingly weak ending.

Fortunately, the production is stuffed with superb actors who bring their characters to life and get every ounce of humour out of the situation they can. Robert Duncan brings delightful bluster to Gus, seemingly completely unaware of how ridiculously pompous he is. Jeff Rawle gives us an excellent George, willing but hesitant, turning everything he touches to dust; and Neil Pearson is full of attitude as the “changed” Dave, specialising in sarcastic asides. In fact, Messrs Rawle and Pearson provide a great double act, dishing out the best of the lines in the show with satisfying relish.

Victoria Wicks imbues the character of Sally with truly ghastly arrogance, as does Susannah Doyle for Joy, but with added sadism. Stephen Tompkinson’s Damien is a troubled soul who doesn’t want to be behind the desk in the studio, Ingrid Lacey’s Helen is a relatively calm oasis in a desert of bigheads, Julia Hills brings great ruthlessness to the character of Mairead and Kerena Jagpal earns our sympathy as the decent Rita having to work alongside this bunch.

I know it’s a cliché, but this is almost the definition of a curate’s egg. Some people were weeping with laughter, others sat in stony silence. If you were a fan of the sitcom, I reckon you’re probably going to be in for a good night. If you weren’t – well, you wouldn’t go to the show anyway! And if you never saw it, I reckon its 50:50 as to how much this show impresses you. The performances are great, it’s the writing that’s debatable. It’s doing amazing business anyway; there was hardly a seat unsold at last Thursday night’s show. The tour continues to Cambridge, Brighton, Milton Keynes, Leicester, Bath, Leeds, Birmingham, Nottingham, Bromley, Norwich, Liverpool, Newcastle, Woking, Cheltenham, and Canterbury, returning to Richmond in June.

3-starsThree-sy Does It!

Review – Saint George and the Dragon, Olivier Theatre at the National, 2nd December 2017

Posted on by

I saw this marketing poster for Saint George and the Dragon whilst I was idly looking at shows coming up in the next National Theatre season and it really tickled my fancy. The out of place, out of era, aforementioned Saint, glumly tucking into a full English at some greasy spoon. Hardly the stuff of legends, is it? But then as George says in the play, he genuinely is a legend.

There are loads of excellent ideas in Rory Mullarkey’s play which has just ended its run at the Olivier, but, to be honest, I’d be surprised if it turned up anywhere else again in the future. In ancient days, when Chaucerian meter was all the rage, a Knyghte y-clept George found himself wandering through the green pastures of Merrie England (or was that a couple of hundred years later) and chanced upon an old man and his daughter, both verray parfit villagers forsooth. We meet the other villagers: Crier, Miller, Smith, Butcher, Healer, Driver, Brewer…. can you guess what services each provided the community? Of course, that’s where our surnames come from. So I have no idea why Mr Mullarkey has called the old man Charles and his daughter Elsa. Presumably his other kids Dave and Wayne were at some crusade or other.

Elsa is about to be eaten alive by the local ruler, a Dragon (that’s King Dragon to you) so Charles pleads with George to challenge the Dragon to save his daughter’s life. Unfortunately, George hadn’t had much luck with Dragons recently and refused (most ungallantly) Charles’ beseeching to fight the Dragon to save his daughter. But then George looked in Elsa’s eyes and Bingo! It was love at first joust. George fights the Dragon, and, blow me down with a fire-throwing breath, he defeats him. But just as he’s about to enjoy his well deserved courtly nuptuals, he hears the call of the Brotherhood, and he’s off to fight another quest, leaving Elsa to darn her medieval mittens for centuries to come.

I don’t think it matters that I’m telling you the plot, because of the reason I mention in the first sentence of my second paragraph. George comes back in Victorian times, and basically the same thing happens again; then he comes back in today’s era… and basically the same thing happens again. Repetitive? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. There’s the nugget of a very clever play in here. The nation needs a knight in shining armour to come and rescue us from the mess we’ve got ourselves into; a character that represents true England – its nobility, its bravery, its courtliness, its generosity of spirit. Against him, the Dragon, who vows to continue his war against George in more subtle, subconscious ways in the future, affecting the minds of the people, encouraging evil and ignobility; selfishness and weakness. You might say the play sticks two fingers up at Brexiteers; I couldn’t possibly comment. At the end of the play George exhorts the townsfolk to join him returning back to the good old days, but, of course, no one wants to go back in time. This is modern England, a land of smartphones and skyscrapers, of Megabowls and watching England lose at football in the pub. You cannot go back.

Nice idea. Unfortunately, it’s a very wordy, overlong, and lumpy play. It starts with George’s sub-Anglo-Saxon introduction and, I kid you not, Mrs Chrisparkle had nodded off for forty winks and woken up again before he had finished his opening monologue. There are some excellent moments of comedy, created by the incongruous juxtaposition of the ancient with the modern – rather like that marketing photo on the programme. There’s a very enjoyable scene in the second act where George, who has no clue what football is, finds himself getting absolutely plastered watching an International England match in the pub, and it’s genuinely very funny. George blames England’s poor performance on the fact that the supporters have lost sight of the fact that we are world beaters. Just have belief, and we will win the day. Good luck with that, George.

There are some very splendid actors involved in this production who really did put in an awful lot of fine effort. John Heffernan brought great virtue to the role of George, with some lovely comic timing and excellent stage presence. I’d really like to see him in something good. Julian Bleach’s characterisation of the Dragon was very amusing, especially in the first scene as a slimy pantomime villain. Brilliant actors with CV’s as long as your arm, like Gawn Grainger and Jeff Rawle, breathe as much life into the play as possible. And there are some excellent special effects – I loved how the Dragon set fire to his servant Henry’s scroll of Terms and Conditions; although the setting up for the descent of the fiery Dragon’s heads onto the stage, using two wires that slowly came into view, was cumbersome and made the whole thing look very ham-fisted.

At 2 hours 50 minutes it has some very long longueurs. My solution – omit a lot of the opening exposition and completely cut out the whole Victorian era episode. It adds nothing to the story and Mr. Mullarkey would still make his patriotic point only far more succinctly. You could probably bring it in at about 2 hours then and it wouldn’t feel anything like as hard going. Overall, it wasn’t too bad; but it wasn’t good either. Faint praise indeed. Can’t win them all!