DEAD FUNNY. To 5 October.
Chichester
DEAD FUNNY
by Terry Johnson
Minerva Theatre To 5 October 2002
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Wed & Sat 2.45pm
Runs 2hr 25min One interval
TICKETS 01243 781312
Review Timothy Ramsden 18 September
A fine, fresh revival that explores the play's serious issues while providing a good measure of laughs. Unexpected entrances, embarrassing positions, custard pies - Terry Johnson's play about suburban afficionados of such British TV comics as Benny Hill and Frankie Howerd has them all. Its smartness lies in the way their comic potential is linked to the characters' stultified relationships.
Just as Abigail McKern's wife, turning rapidly into middle-age, finally persuades her bored gynaecologist husband to go through their therapist's programme of body-touching, neighbour Brian turns up with news of Benny Hill's death. The moment wifely hand's due to contact husbandly penis, the doorbell rings, letting Richard reduce the therapy to sarcasm.
Eleanor may not have the others' high-chortle appreciation of great TV comedy routines but she has an original wit they lack - one stimulated by her domestic and physical misery, unshielded by their
acceptance of their lives' limitations, or comforted by their ritualised recycling of others' humour (the play's set in the week both Hill and Howerd died).
Adrian Lukis has an essentially cheery manner, as his fine Hildy Johnson in Chichester's 2002 mainhouse opener The Front Page showed. It makes him apt casting; here the natural sense of cheer is soon smudged over by glacial emotional remoteness, both towards his wife and in the brief - and, naturally enough, interruptused - coitus with sole female Dead Funny Society member Lisa, his old friend Nick's wife.
And, as Eleanor yearns for the baby Nick and Lisa park at her house, there's coldly uncomic irony in Nick's knowledge it can't be his child. Ingram catches the cold douches Johnson's expert plotting provides. They're the more poignant for coming from people dressed as Benny Hill comedy stereotypes for the Society's celebration of their favourite's career.
And their culmination, in a Hill-ite moment, comes when Eleanor's skirt is accidentally ripped away to show she's wearing the sexy get-up of a Hill's Angel dollybird ready to tempt her husband late at night.
After all the comic routines this moment climaxes the distance, fury and desperation that have emerged through the evening.
Ingram and her cast chart the complex waters of this fine play, making clear its potential for classic stature. Among this cast Richard Moore is outstanding. Generally, Brian's self-outing is funny simply because, starting with Niall Buggy in the premiere, he's been played hilariously as more camp than a scout and guide convention.
But Moore holds the manner tighter; if you don't know the play his revelation could come as real news, putting it firmly on the harsher side of the play's world. It's risky - there are lines to come which suggest otherwise. But it's just possible and is consistent with Moore's essentially kindly characterisation, extending to the final moments when he tries, from sheer friendliness, to comfort Eleanor, leading movingly to the first, and last, warm and 'real' laugh of the whole show.
Eleanor: Abigail McKern
Richard: Adrian Lukis
Brian: Richard Moore
Nick: Chris Larner
Lisa: Pippa Hinchley
Director: Loveday Ingram
Designer: Tim Shortall
Lighting: Robin Carter
Sound: John Owens
2002-09-22 21:43:56