WILDE BOYZ. To 28 July.
Hull
WILDE BOYZ
by Gordon Steel
Hull Truck Theatre To 28 July 2007
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat 25 July 2pm
Runs 2hr 15min One interval
TICKETS: 01482 323638
www.hulltruck.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 254 July
Mild Steel entertainment rounds off Truck’s summer season.
No tat has been spared in staging Gordon Steel’s new comedy. Designer Pip Leckenby transforms the Spring Street stage with slash-curtains, worn tables and chairs plus near-empty drinks-glasses into Sid’s club. It’s the frame for flashbacks to the time when three middle-aged brothers, out of work and favour with their women, tried to form a mid-life Boyband.
Nothing vulgar in their ambitions; just the pure adrenalin brought by thoughts of fame, fortune and adoring women. Of course, it goes wrong. Then one of them tries a solo career before returning to the bosom of the none-too-bright brotherhood who’d wanted to shine as stars.
Gordon Steel accurately targets modern celebrity, where fame is its own justification and triviality and ineptitude feed public appetites with junk-food entertainment. The singing trio are dragged (literally) through an act that humiliates them and the solo career involves increasingly laughable get-ups.
Steel manages, as usual, to come up with a wealth of one-liners. But he “shit”s too much. His 2005 Christmas show A Kick in the Baubles had one bring-down-the-house line about shit and alphabet soup. Here, he resorts to excrement with a less funny regularity that suggests, word-wise, he’s in the soup.
A skilled cast make much of the interplay between James Hornsby’s middle brother “sad Harry” Wilde, so-called for being a loser but also given to moodiness, Robert Hudson’s older tough-guy Billy, pleased as Punch when the papers describe him as terrifying, and Graham Martin’s Cloughie, not too bright upstairs but his youthful naivety making him an agent’s dream for 15-minutes of fame making an unintentional fool of himself.
The women exist mainly to indicate the brothers’ lack of romance and reality, while the present-day frame for the Boyz’ own story brings on coarse acting of stiff-jointed old characters, though it’s enjoyable watching each actor transform between two contrasting characters. This is a play of incident rather than story development and the end is awkwardly inconclusive, something John Godber’s direction doesn’t hide. Everything’s good-humoured, the point about celebrity’s well made, but the undeveloped characterisation means the play never becomes either hilarious or truly trenchant.
Sharon/Angela/Tina/Chantelle: Erica Barker
Kate/Janice: Julie Higginson
Sid/Harry: James Hornsby
Dougie/Billy: Robert Hudson
Colin/Cloughie/Bobby Diamond: Graham Martin
Director: John Godber
Designer: Pip Leckenby
Lighting: Graham Kirk
2007-07-25 14:16:05