STEPTOE & SON IN MURDER AT OIL DRUM LANE.
London.
STEPTOE & SON IN MURDER AT OIL DRUM LANE
by Ray Galton and John Antrobus.
Comedy Theatre.
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat Wed & Sat 3pm.
Runs 2hr 10min One interval.
TICKETS: 0870 060 6637 (booking fee).
Review: Timothy Ramsden 24 February.
Old bones, and their accompanying rags, revivified in terrific performances.
Question 1: What was a ‘rag-and-bone’ man?
Question 2: Did you ever see the 60’s/70s sitcom Steptoe & Son?
If the first question confounds you and you answer the second ‘No’, this show is likely to have limited appeal. It’s easy to pick up that the central characters, grizzled old dad Albert and aspiring son Harold, make a living from others’ cast-offs. But the world where they trotted with horse and cart, relying on houses having somebody at home during the day, is now the subject of nostalgia.
And without knowledge of the original, deep-etched individuality of TV performers Wilfred Brambell and Harry H Corbett as father and son respectively, most of the point’s lost. There’s little salvation in the verbal jokes, mostly at the level of canned-laughter TV sitcom humour. My criticisms (at the play’s York premiere last October – see the archived review) of the fantasy elements in the play’s frame and first act, making them so unlike the original programmes’ innovative realism, plus the second act’s plot rip-off from (sorry, tribute to) an American classic comedy, remain.
Yet the show seems tighter; there remain a couple of splendidly crude, quick gags in act 2 relating to Albert’s disgusting ways, while for anyone knowing the original there is nostalgic recall in Nigel Hook’s detailed setting of the room in Oil Drum Lane, as in Christopher Madin’s score, curling its way round Ron Grainer’s compulsive TV signature tune.
And primarily in the superb performances of the central characters. Neither Harry Dickman nor Jake Nightingale is an especial look-alike for Brambell or Corbett. But they evoke their predecessors uncannily. With Nightingale it’s the voice, driving then surprisingly light, and the expansive physicality. In his opening moments the face sets firm then softens into dreaminess, the eyes darting about as if looking for a better world. Dickman by contrast is all inward, devising his private agendas to keep Harold tied to him, head down, voice muttering, tripping about the stage. Both are remarkable performances that go beyond mere impersonations and make the show work, at least for anyone answering those opening questions aright.
Harold: Jake Nightingale.
Albert: Harry Dickman.
Ribbentrop: Laurence Kennedy.
Fiona/Joyce: Alyson Coote.
National Trust Woman/Pamela: Juliet Howland.
Director: Roger Smith.
Designer: Nigel Hook.
Lighting: Richard G Jones.
Sound: Clement Rawling.
Composer: Christopher Madin.
2006-02-26 23:31:10