OF GOOD REPORT. To 5 December.
London
OF GOOD REPORT
by John Antrobus
White Bear Theatre To 5 December 2004
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Sun 4pm
Runs 2hr 10min One interval
TICKETS: 020 7793 9193
Review: Timothy Ramsden 21 November
It was just everyday insanity down at the BBC With absolute confidence John Antrobus' production of this new play by John Antrobus, starring Paul Needham (as John Antrobus) creates a wackily individual view of BBC Light Entertainment in the 1950s, showing how British post-war society was fertile ground for the zany radio comedy that White Bear boss Michael Kingsbury's already explored in Round the Horne Revisited and his Leeds production of Roy Smiles' Goons show Ying Tong.
Being a trainee army officer who left Sandhurst because he didn't want to kill anybody but preferred not to wait until that meant disobeying an order, Antrobus has an unconventional approach that fits his announced rejection of character' and plot while conjuring a coherent, comic picture of a conventional-bound world suddenly made strange.
No wonder Orwell modelled the society of 1984on the beeb, where Antrobus lands up. Here Light Ent's ruled by a double-barrelled army officer running everything on military lines, leaving each afternoon for his Home County village and bored wife. Then there's the Irish (Irish?) secret-service type wanting the young comedy writer to name cold-war conspirators.
Needham's Antrobus goes through this with a blithe innocence (older writers generally portray their young selves as sweet innocents).Fellow-writers are an energetically insouciant lot, working in cubicles, coming out to line up like factory-workers for tea.
Antrobus gets teamed-up with the play's dedicatee, the late Johnny Speight (creator-to-be of Alf Garnett). The Tory Antrobus is mild to the bitter of urban socialist Speight, spewing obscenities throughout each sentence and determined to change society. Jonathan Clarkson is a fine Speight, snarling, witty and defiant.
They co-wrote Frankie Howerd's radio programme (one scene brilliantly shows the comedy partnership in deadline-busting late-night collaboration, evoking potential Howerd patter out of nothing), interviewing then-celebs like Gilbert Harding (Adam Kimmel over-emphatic but coping capably with the none-funny part) for the show's feature-spot.
With Jon Campling's hilariously straight-backed, absent-mannered BBC exec, taking a moment to absorb anything that's said to him, and Jayne Denny finding the apt character/caricature border, Antrobus' production is finely acted, on Peter Docherty's comic-sketch set. Packed with hilarious cameos, played at high speed, it's a comic treat.
Beverley Houghton-Twist: Jon Campling
Johnny Speight: Jonathan Clarkson
Judy Houghton-Twist: Jayne Denny
George Beckett: Colin Hardy
Gilbert Harding: Adam Kimmel
Terry Nation/Dick Barry: Sebastian Knapp
John Antrobus: Paul Needham
Beryl: Laura Penneycard
Director: John Antrobus
Designer/Costume: Peter Docherty
Lighting: Lucy Hansom
Sound: Daevy Jay
Movement: Laurel Andrews
2004-11-23 08:04:14