DICK BARTON. To 23 February.
Hornchurch.
DICK BARTON – SPECIAL AGENT
by Phil Wilmott.
Queen’s Theatre To 23 February 2008.
Tue-Sat 8pm Mat 14, 23 Feb 2.30pm.
Audio-described 23 Feb 2.30pm.
BSL Signed 20 Feb.
Captioned 13 Feb.
Runs 2hr 5min One interval.
TICKETS: 01708 443333.
www.queens-theatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 12 February.
Stiff upper lips hardly tickle the ribs.
Post-war, two wireless serials commanded mass audiences. Paul Temple solved mysteries to the suave flow of signature tune Coronation Scot, while Dick Barton’s physical thrills were heralded nightly by the bounding Devil’s Galop. It was another world, one Phil Wilmott sends up, as so much square-jawed, high-principled pugnacity has been sent up since the sixties.
This is the first of five Wilmott Bartons, premiered over various Christmas times at Croydon’s Warehouse Theatre, a tiny space where close encounters with the performers possibly gave the pieces something of a sheen.
On a larger stage, what I saw of the piece (which didn’t include the opening half-hour, owing to an accident-bound M25) confirmed the response to a production in Keswick, that its comedy is very thin. There are humorous moments, certainly in Matt Devitt’s lively Queen’s production as a fake fluffy dog goes for the villain disguised as an English butler.
There’s an apt, inconceivably fiendish, plus unnecessarily complex, killing-device employed by the sinister foreigners in their plot to conquer England by lacing the nation’s tea with mind-mushing dope. And a BBC Announcer who keeps emerging to hasten the plot and heighten the tension.
But the comedy never takes off, and instead of sudden wit or ingenuity, the laboured sexual puns and stereotypical attitudinising drag repetitiously on. It all lacks the vital sense that, if he wanted, Wilmott could produce a storyline with something of the tension and pace of the original Barton scripts.
Still, a near-capacity midweek Hornchurch audience, while not frequently laughing out-loud, found enough humour to raise voluble appreciation at the end. And the six-strong cast work skilfully and hard, including Paul Leonard doubling the title character with Barton’s working-class chum Snowy White, and Karen Fisher-Pollard as Euro-vamp villainess Marta and English Rose Daphne Fritters (does she, one asks?).
Mark Walters’ elegant set puts solid furniture among the clouds of fancy and sends radio-waves over the stage, beside providing enough sliding panels for a whole Barton series. And Devitt provides a fine fake first-act finale as the characters keep returning for yet more detached chords from Holst’s Mars.
BBC Announcer/Colonel Gardener: Oliver Beamish.
Marta Heartburn/Daphne Fritters: Karen Fisher-Pollard.
Jock Anderson: Simon Jessop.
Dick Barton/Snoey White: Paul Leonard.
Baron Scarheart: Jonathan Markwood.
MC/Sir Stanley Fritters/Lady Laxington: Rowan Talbot.
Director: Matt Devitt.
Designer: Mark Walters.
Lighting: Richard Godin.
Sound: Simon Deacon.
Musical Director: Ben Goddard.
Choreographer: Cara Elston.
2008-02-13 11:35:19