Review – Jack Absolute Flies Again, Lyttelton Theatre, National Theatre, London, 27th July 2022

Posted on July 29, 2022 by therealchrisparkle

One of the greatest joys of the British theatre in the 21^st century has been the rise of the playwright Richard Bean, whose One Man Two Guvnors stands out as one of the true comedy highlights of the past twenty years. Now, in collaboration with Oliver Chris, who also starred in that play, he has taken another old play and given it a modern update – this time, Sheridan’s The Rivals, which has been inventively shaken up and repositioned in Sussex in 1940, where Churchill has requisitioned Malaprop Mansion as an RAF base where our brave chaps are taking flight daily to shoot down their German enemies, or, rather, scrambling their spitfires, pressing the tit and bagging a Jerry (thanks to the helpful glossary of terminology in the programme.)

If you know The Rivals, there’s a lot of fun to be gained by comparing Sheridan’s characters with Bean & Chris’ modern equivalents. We still have the braggart Sir Anthony Absolute paying court to Mrs Malaprop. We still have Young Absolute trying to woo Lydia Languish who only has eyes for another, whom Absolute impersonates (in an amusing northern switch, Ensign Beverley becomes Dudley Scunthorpe). Julia and Faulkland are still in love, Sir Lucius O’Trigger the Irish baronet in love with Lydia is now Bikram “Tony” Khattri, a Sikh pilot, and Lydia’s maid Lucy is still up to no good. Today, Mrs Malaprop’s lexicographical mishaps have taken a turn for the worse and the fourth wall is broken more than ever, and the writers surprise us with what could be a sad ending, if only the rest of the tone of the play wasn’t so buoyant.

It’s all presented in a slightly larger-than-life style; the gardens and boudoir of Malaprop Mansion are colourfully realised in Mark Thompson’s set design and his military uniforms for the characters are crisp and convincing. The direction is fast and furious, and to say it’s played for laughs is an understatement. That’s because, deep down, apart from the surprisingly moving last five minutes, “laughs” are basically all there is. The play constantly bombards us with so much joking, wordplay, physical comedy or any combination of the three, that there is no time to take breath between them. Inevitably, some of the jokes don’t land, whereas others land beautifully. There are some brilliantly funny sequences, primarily between Mrs Malaprop and Sir Anthony Absolute, but there are also several scenes that languish (geddit) and don’t hit the spot.

Caroline Quentin is rapidly becoming one of our grandes dames of theatre, and she rises beautifully to the challenge of getting every other word wrong as Mrs Malaprop. It must be so difficult to continuously, deliberately, say the wrong word – your brain must be going nineteen to the dozen trying to correct yourself. She does some fabulous pratfalls, and even if they’ve given her way too many malapropisms (my favourites were clitoris and Mexican), it’s still a terrific comedy performance. She’s partnered with a lot of comic bluster from Peter Forbes as the pantomimish baronet Sir Anthony Absolute, channelling his Ronnie Barker Hark at Barker persona from the 1960s. Like everything else in this show, it lacks subtlety, but the characterisation is spot on!

Impossible to tell if this made a difference to the energy of the show, but for our performance we saw George Kemp as Jack Absolute, in what I suspect may have been quite a last minute change, judging from the very supportive round of applause to him from the rest of the cast and his facial expression that said phew! during curtain call. He certainly looks the part, very dapper and heroic, and gave a very good performance. Kelvin Fletcher is also excellent as the fitter Dudley Scunthorpe, all engine oil and short vowels, and it was entertaining (if not vital to the plot) to have a dance number where Mr Fletcher could exercise his Strictly credentials.

Kerry Howard provides a crowd-pleasing performance as the mischievous and wise-beyond-her-status maid Lucy, pointing out Khattri’s poetic plagiarisms, and indulging in a rather sweet game of Hide The Duck with Dudley. I was slightly put off by her vocal characterisation being straight from the Catherine Tate stable, but then Ms Tate does so many characters that sometimes similarities may be inevitable. Natalie Simpson is a delightfully gung-ho Lydia Languish, and there’s great support from Jordan Metcalfe as the wilting Roy and Helena Wilson as his innamorata Julia (who has probably the best line in the show), James Corrigan as the never-give-up Bob Acres and Tim Steed as Brian Coventry, the senior RAF officer who’s clearly holding back a secret, and whose life at base might become more interesting with the revelation that one of the new fighter pilots is “a Brian too”, nudge nudge, wink wink.

For all the effort that’s put into the show, and for all its excellent pedigrees, there is something about it that somehow, unfortunately, just doesn’t quite work. It’s the old sum of the parts not equalling the whole kind of thing. I guess it’s possible to just try too hard to be funny; less is more, and all that. It’s the kind of show that Mrs Chrisparkle would describe as relentless, which is not a compliment, although oddly she actually enjoyed it more than me. If the National Theatre were expecting the next One Man Two Guvnors, they’ll be disappointed, but nevertheless it’s certainly full of derring-do and frequently titillates your beer-lever.

Production photos by Brinkhoff Moegenburg

Four They’re Jolly Good Fellows!

Review – Hedda Tesman, Minerva Theatre Chichester, 28th September 2019

Posted on October 1, 2019 by therealchrisparkle

Henrik Ibsen is one of those playwrighting gifts that never goes away. He’s currently enjoying a revival which, by my workings-out, has been going on for at least sixty years. The challenge to make him relevant to today, whatever that means, is there if you want to take up the reins, although plenty of excellent Ibsen revivals play them straight, plucked out of the 19^th century in all their dark and dismal glory, and they work as well as they ever did. On the other hand, there’s a trend to produce updated versions of our dour Norwegian hero. Only last week Mrs Chrisparkle and I saw the excellent revival of Peter Gynt by David Hare at the National, which set him in modern-day Scotland, in a very effective time and place transformation. A couple of years ago the National Theatre toured with a “modern” version of Hedda Gabler adapted by Patrick Marber, which made the purists wince and was, on reflection, probably too clever-clever by half.

And now Cordelia Lynn has also adapted Hedda Gabler, Ibsen’s possibly most performed play, featuring his disturbed protagonist fighting for breath in a life where she feels stifled. Where the title of Ibsen’s original stressed her inability to escape from the manipulative hold on her exerted by her late father the General, Ms Lynn’s apparently more conventional title, regarding her as Hedda married to Tesman, emphasises the stress on her from her marriage.

Many of the changes that have been made to the original work extremely well. This Hedda is a much older woman, one whom you sense is more regretful of the past rather than fearful of the future – more of this later. Thea is no longer her friend but her daughter, which reveals a relationship where Hedda has never truly supported her child. Thea’s infatuation with Elijah brings him more closely into the family circle; perhaps, as a result, the sideline attentions of Judge Brack feel less intimidating or significant in this telling of the story than I have seen in previous versions. Bertha the maid is now a cleaner, employed by an agency; a professional woman on her own right who one feels can dictate her own terms much more positively than a mere servant, which adds just a little extra zest to the household. It’s a very successful repositioning of the play into modern times and does, indeed, retain the relevance of today.

However, as with freedom of speech, with freedom to update comes responsibility. By making these changes, the audience has to suspend its disbelief because modern technology renders quite a number of Ibsen’s structural markers outdated. It’s impossible to imagine, for instance, that when Tesman spent his night on the tiles with Brack and Elijah, and they weren’t going to make it back home, that Tesman wouldn’t have texted either Hedda or Thea to explain. No need for his daughter to wait up all night unnecessarily. Similarly, when Hedda cruelly (there’s no other real justification for this act) destroys Elijah’s original document through fire, it’s ridiculous to expect that he hadn’t already downloaded it onto his laptop; after all, when Thea proposes that she and her father should try to recreate Elijah’s work, the laptop is their first port of call. For me, those two problems make it very hard to accept that the story could happen, in the way it is presented, today.

Whilst we’re on the subject of inconsistencies, a couple of things really annoyed me – I think I am definitely turning into a grumpy old man. Thea and Tesman are working hard in the back-room area of the stage with the laptop, trying to re-write Elijah’s words. Tesman enters the living area saying they can’t work out back there because it’s too uncomfortable, with all the boxes around. You look up at the area to see where they have been working; and there are no boxes. Sorry, what? Similarly, at the beginning of the play Bertha starts to vacuum clean the floor. At the end of the play, she takes a mop and bucket to the same floor. Really? Mop and bucket on the carpet?

As a linguistic aside, this production might be the final hammer blow that makes the C word virtually acceptable – or pointless, your choice. Hedda uses it twice in the same speech and it has the extraordinary effect of drastically reducing both its meaning and its impact. I don’t think that was the intention; I think the intention was to shock, and to show how vicious Hedda is towards her own daughter. But, strangely, Hedda’s sentiments would have had much greater impact without using that word.

That said, Haydn Gwynne is superb as Hedda; a tired, defeated, misunderstood figure, suffocated by the good intentions of her husband, and jealous of the freedoms and achievements of the younger generation. Nevertheless, I’ve never seen a Hedda whom I thought was less likely to take her own life. There’s no sense of mental instability; although she may be unhappy with life, she really looks like she has it under control, and, if anything, you’d simply expect her to self-medicate on gin. So when that final, lethal, moment comes, it’s quite a shock, as I had completely forgotten that’s what was going to happen!

I particularly enjoyed Natalie Simpson’s performance as Thea, with her scarcely concealed mixture of contempt and dislike for her mother (learned behaviour, I’m sure) but her wide-eyed appreciation for every step Elijah takes. There’s excellent support from Anthony Calf and Jacqueline Clarke as Tesman and Aunt Julie, and (maybe) slightly underpowered performances from Jonathan Hyde as Brack – who seems to lack relevance in this production – and Irfan Shamji as Elijah. Rebecca Oldfield’s Bertha is a bright spark who cheers up the stage whenever she comes on, bringing her positive, get on with it mood into the oppressive household.

We saw the last matinee of its run at Chichester – and I was surprised at how undersubscribed it was. As a co-production with Headlong and The Lowry, the production now moves on to a run at The Lowry from 3 – 19 October. Book now – the inventive changes that have brought it into the 21^st century make it definitely worth seeing.