The cast – playing about 20 characters between them (not thousands as the flyer suggests) is excellent. Terrence O’Connell has a great track record in musical, but this isn’t a musical, so lots of research is needed into the ‘shtick’ of early 20 th century Music Hall - leave the characters as they are, but ramp up the business, the illusion of things going wrong (of even starting a scene again because someone has ‘dried - all rehearsed), of two characters saying the same line…and then…in unison “wait a minute, that’s my line…no it’s not its my line” …all that stuff is Music Hall, all tried and true, all belly laugh stuff no matter how many times we’ve heard it. ![]() If you look at One Man, Two Guvnors there’s very little comedy on the page – it’s all in the business, the direction, and it’s hilarious. Slapstick got its name from a prop which was just that - a stick with a hinged end used to make a sound offstage when one person slapped another (a la Three Stooges and very politically incorrect now) – gradually it encompassed custard pies and all other aspects of physical comedy - what you heard might not be funny, but what you saw certainly was. Now Music Hall is all about the “business” (I was brought up in a family of Music Hall performers) rather than the script - and there simply isn’t enough business. The choices are to play it straight, and hope that a great and hilarious script carries the day, or to go completely slapstick and make it an elongated Music Hall sketch (I’m not sure anyone throwing that phrase around knows what it actually means, and certainly Hulse doesn’t). This production hasn’t found its feet yet. The beauty of a “pisstake” show like this, is the license to go all out with the physical comedy – to be outrageous and know that it is totally acceptable. The film played it straight, allowing the spectacle to do the work, but when you have just three actors – well, the cast size determines the style. It’s great to see a family friendly show, but there isn’t enough to engage adults for two hours plus. It’s not by coincidence that those laughing loudest were the children in the audience, who shrieked at every joke no matter how many times it was repeated. He is primarily a writer for theatre in education. The fault mainly lies with Toby Hulse’s script. There’s no spectacle, but not enough imagination. Presenting the show on stage throws up its own problems, since it’s caught between two worlds. ![]() What made the book and the subsequent film so exciting was the spectacle - in the former to let your imagination run riot, and in the latter to lay out the entire world before the viewer in filmic actuality. In the tradition of the marvellous The 39 Steps (which again requires great vision to make it funny) and The Complete Works of Shakespeare in 90 minutes, this turns on its head Jules Verne’s story of an English Gentleman suspected of robbery who makes a wager to go around the world in eighty days, and all that he encounters on the way. There’s no doubt in my mind that once this production settles in, and the actors relax, this will become a much funnier show as it stands, it’s a pleasant, if overly long, homage that doesn’t realise its full potential, and that’s a pity. I found that this approach allowed interesting themes to emerge around whose stories get told, whose stories dominate and who should stand aside to give space to the untold ones.Written by Toby Hulse (from the novel by Jules Verne). Juliet Forster, creative director of The York Theatre Royal and director of Around the World in 80 Days, comments, I was amazed that we generally know more about Jules Verne’s fictional characters than we do about the real woman, Nellie Bly, who set the record for circumnavigating the globe in 1889 (and did the journey in less time…) I knew I had to tell her story. ![]() Rounding off the cast as the sharp-witted Knife Thrower, Detective Fix, is Eddie Mann (Rocketman, Paramount Macbeth, Three Inch Fools Back to The Future, Secret Cinema). Wilson Benedito (50 Ways to Kill Your Lover, Amazon Alan Carr’s New Year Specstacular, Channel 4) provides comedic relief as The Clown, Passepartout. ![]() Genevieve Sabherwal (My Grandma’s a Walrus, Southwark Playhouse Speed Dial, Pleasance Spooky Ship, Bristol Old Vic) will be performing as the Aouda, The Trick Rider.
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