LAUREL & HARDY. To 14 May.
Edinburgh
LAUREL & HARDY
by Tom McGrath
Royal Lyceum Theatre To 14 May 2005
Tue-Sat 7.45pm Mat 11, 14 May 2.30pm
BSL Signed 10 May
Runs 2hr 5min One interval
TICKETS: 0131 248 4848
www.lyceum.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 7 May
Stan and Ollie do the biz at the Lyceum.If the defining aspect of a great double act is that you can't imagine one existing without the other, then Laurel and Hardy fill the bill bang-on. Though he outlasted his partner by 8 years (dying in 1965) Stan Laurel never performed without Oliver Norville ('Babe') Hardy. And their cinematic comedy is inextricably built out of their personalities - which off-set were the opposite of their on-camera personas.
On camera we see Ollie try repeatedly to explain to Stan why he should refuse a drink; in 'real-world' business deals it's Hardy who's persuaded to sign another less-than-favourable contract rather than following Stan's instruction to insist on a joint meeting.
Tom McGrath's ingeniously tight bio-drama includes plenty of the pair's screen routines while moving forward through their relationship, reuniting them after death in the vast, anonymous grey of a celestial studio. There are suggestions of pain - some shrill-voiced wives are heard through the loudspeakers, the year 1940 is mentioned with foreboding, and several times Ollie doubles-up with a painful knot in his stomach.
But life had little except the obvious rubs and regrets for this pair - they never found anyone as constructive at focusing their career as Hal Roach (who, of course, they left to gain more control), while post-1945 the world, and comedy, was inevitably moving beyond their style.
Tony Cownie's just the director for all this. His precise comic sense is ever evident, and if he's not the man to go for the directorial jugular with the harder stuff, this piece can take a gentler approach. What it needs is a pair of fine central performances. It has them here.
Barnaby Power suggests rather than recreates Stan's voice, and the face, when denuded of its black hat, isn't quite right. But he has the pacing and the characteristic facial expression with its dreaminess and moments of apparent illumination.
Steven McNicoll is Ollie to the life, back from the dead. His face seems to have expanded to Hardy's contours, the eyes express Ollie's mind, the voice has every intonation and detailed mannerism right, while each gesture is shaped and timed to perfection.
And he creates a rounded (in more than one sense), sympathetic character. There's melancholy in him rather than the more purposive Stan. But that's only in actuality; what matter's with these two, of course, is reel-life. Power, McNicoll and Cownie recreate this beautifully so when the great studio doors finally swing shut behind them at 'The End', memories and laughter linger on.
Oliver Hardy: Steven McNicoll
Stan Laurel: Barnaby Power
Pianist: Jon Beales
Director Tony Cownie
Designer: Neil Murray
Lighting: Jeanine Davies
Choreographer: Rita Henderson
2005-05-08 12:45:11