THREE MEN IN A BOAT To 20 June.

Tour.

THREE MEN IN A BOAT
by Jerome K Jerome adapted by Daniel O’Brien.

Bury St Edmunds Theatre Royal Tour to 20 June 2009.
Runs 2hr 25min One interval.
Review: Timothy Ramsden 15 May at Witcham Village Hall.

Favourite comic moments, and a few surprisingly serious.
Spring in East Anglia, and with it the annual rural tour from Bury St Edmunds’ Theatre Royal. This year it’s Daniel O’Brien’s adaptation of Jerome K Jerome’s popular late Victorian novel about a boat-trip up the Thames.

It’s a famously humorous novel, and the play, accordingly, is largely comic. Yet O’Brien also finds room for the book’s quieter, reflective aspects - the river that causes comic events also contains a floating corpse. Theatre’s well-placed to show the discomforts and tensions of suddenly living in close proximity, subject to the inclemency of the English weather and the English rural citizen. There are entangled bodies in a night-time tent, attempts to locate the boat after an evening’s intoxication ashore, or at tact during an attack of flatulence.

Our trio of travellers remark upon historical associations, in line with Jerome’s original purpose for his book, while their voyage is charted on an improvised map. Songs of the period are imported or reworked to provide musical interludes. There are moments of audience involvement which work well enough; such pranks are especially amusing when encountered for the first time.

There are amusing moments of physical invention too, though, as always with such episodic evenings there’s a problem is keeping overall momentum; the adaptation might better have reached its interval with a couple of scenes shorn. Still, it’s an enjoyable trip, well-calculated for the slightly improvised feel of village halls, and doubtless adapting to the formal venues of its later locations.

There is, though, an imbalance in the performances, with Alexander Caine’s Jerome making every point through overt accentuations and expression. By giving everything it fails to invite us into the performance as do William Kenning’s George and Simon Yadoo’s Harris, with their blithe complacency (though smartly blazered, they’re not the idol rich – Harris joins the trip late as he’s forced to work at his bank-job on Saturday mornings).

And the dog Montmorency is enjoyably created by a deer-stalker passed between the actors. His meeting with a fierce cat, played out as a street-status face-off, is a comic highlight; his final memorial a suitably elegiac conclusion.

J: Alexander Caine.
George: William Kenning.
Harris: Simon Yadoo.

Director: Abigail Anderson.
Designer: Libby Watson.
Lighting: John Bramley.
Composer/Musical Director: Peter White.

2009-05-18 00:01:30