COMEDIANS by Trevor Griffiths. Oxford Playhouse to 20 October
Oxford
COMEDIANS
by Trevor Griffiths
Oxford Stage Company, Oxford Playhouse To 20 October 2001
Runs 2hr 45min Two intervals
TICKETS 01865 798600
Review Timothy Ramsden 16 October
A good revival shows that Griffiths' play has the stature to withstand shifts in humour over the last quarter-century.Opening grouch: Trevor Griffiths' 1975 dissection of humour has come direct from its only other date, Exeter's Northcott Theatre. That has an auditorium rising from stage level; at Oxford many stalls seats are below stage level. Director Sean Holmes and designer Anthony Lamble seem unaware of this with the result I (and others) spent much of act one unable to see a major character despite his being centre stage. On a good day, I'd call that a design fault; on a bad day, incompetence.
Set in a Manchester evening class, the play shows retired comic Eddie Waters (Ron Moody) giving a final pep to six apprentice comedians before they try their acts down the social club in front of Bert Challenor (George Layton), who comes bearing career-launching contracts.
Waters and Challenor represent comedy as either self and social exploration, or as hate-filled stereotyping. Each comic has to choose whether to go for an expanded awareness of the world, or for the contract. In a fine performance that mixes impatience, contempt and bitterness, David Tennant's tall, shaven-headed Gethin Price breaks in a new direction: humour that lulls, then scorches with the pain and fury of the deprived.
The play has a new hurdle; the racist, sexist jokes of Challenor's protegees Sammy Samuels (Vincenzo Nicoli), the Jew with anti-Jewish quips, and Stephen Kennedy's Irish comic McBrain have past their laugh-by date, while the inclusive humour of Billy Carter's Connor is more familiar than in 1975. This shifts the balance of audience response during the central, club, act.
But the play's argument, if anything, seems richer and more pertinent today. In a fine cameo Kish Sharma's interloper Mr Patel tells Waters a Hindu joke that Eddie knows in its Jewish version. The two, both submerged low within society, share the laughter of release.
And Richard Simpson repeats the role of Caretaker he created in the Nottingham Playhouse premiere. Now, as then, the worker does his job, gets no overtime, and hasn't a smile for any of them.
Caretaker: Richard Simpson
Gethin Price: David Tennant
Phil Murray: Martin Freeman
George McBain: Stephen Kennedy
Sammy Samuels: Vincenzo Nicoli
Mick Connor: Billy Carter
Eddit Waters: Ron Moody
Ged Murray: Nicolas Tennant
Mr Patel: Kish Sharma
Bert Challenor: George Layton
Club Secretary: Roy North
Director: Sean Holmes
Designer: Anthony Lamble
Lighting: Simon Bennison
Sound: Simon Whitehorn for Orbital
2001-10-17 01:26:51