THE PLAY WHAT I WROTE: Hamish McColl, Sean Foley and Eddie Braben

Wyndhams Theatre: BO 020 7369 1736
Runs: 1h 50m: one interval

Review: Ian Willox: 6th November, 2002

Reverent irreverance
THE PLAY WHAT I WROTE claims to be about double acts: Sean Foley and Hamish McColl, who in the 1990s toured up and down the country in a transit van to huge public indifference, and the slightly better known Eric Morecambe and Ernest Wise, who in the 1970s had a television show with viewing figures of over twenty-five million. The hell with intellectual justification – this is a very, very funny show.

There are reasons why it might not be. Sean Foley and Hamish McColl, under pressure from producer David Pugh (seductively impersonated by Toby Jones), could have produced a tribute act. Adding RADA and RSC graduate Kenneth Branagh as director brings luster but not necessarily belly laughs to the project. But then came Eddie Braben (Eric & Ernie’s writer) and choreographer Irving Davies (who first worked with Morecambe and Wise in a Syd Fields musical), neither strangers to the hand-dirtying work of making people laugh. Top that up with musical arranger Steve Parry (a tribute band veteran) and you get a wonderful mix.

What that mix consists of is hard to describe – not least because the gags come so fast and furious (and from so many different directions at once) that there isn’t the time to retain or analyze anything. Helpless laughter is about the best you can manage under the continuous comic assault. Yet out of the mayhem emerges the distillation of what made Eric and Ernie funny. But what a way to do it.

This is a rare beast on the West End – a show that can send you home with aching laughter muscles and still smiling.

Sean Foley
Hamish McColl
Toby Jones
AN Other Actor
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Choreographer: Irving Davies
Designer: Alice Powers
Lighting: Tim Mitchell
Sound: Simon Baker
Original Songs: Gary Yershon
Musical Arrangements: Steve Parry
Consultant: Gary Morecambe

2002-11-07 20:52:31