At the Torch |
| Torch Theatre- Dead Funny , Torch Theatre Milford Haven , October 6, 2005 |
| This review first appeared in the Western Mail.. Peter Doran, the man who has guided the fortunes of the Torch for the past few years, has been gradually wooing his local audiences with a programme of familiar modern classics – Alan Ayckbourn, Willie Russell, Abigail’s Party, Of Mice and Men, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, that sort of thing. Now he obviously feels the time is right to challenge them a little more. So within minutes we have full-frontal nudity (male, natch: Milford isn’t quite ready for naked women), erotic massage and the soundtrack of a lovers’-guide soft-porn video. But the play, fortunately, is that highly-praised West End hit, Dead Funny, so that’s OK then – and Terry Johnson’s very clever and very funny tale of marital discord is a perfect vehicle to expose folk unused to contemporary few-holds-barred theatre (albeit of a fairly restrained West End kind) to a realistic world where respectable characters use four-letter words and, yes, get their kit off. Johnson has been called a moralist with wit – and while he undoubtedly has wit in spades his morality is of a postmodernist kind where there is no preaching but a relentless expose of hypocrisy and indifference with no neat endings. The play is set very specifically in April 1992, when, as all lovers of British comedy know, Benny Hill died, followed shortly afterwards by Frankie Howard, and some of the members of the local Benny Hill appreciation society decide to have a wake. It isn’t just Benny Hill they admire but a whole tradition of British comedy, mostly the bawdy tradition of Max Miller and the Carry Ons. Richard and Elenor’s home has the enlarged faces of Howard and Hill, Sid James, Tommy Cooper, Eric Morecombe and Tony Hancock leering from the windows and walls, invisible presences in a household where impersonation and replication of famous comic routines takes the place of real relationships – and all poor Elenor wants is love and a baby. But husband Richard is not interested in her, or indeed in any emotional contact. A surgeon specialising in hysterectomies, to him humanity is as represented in the anatomic doll he has on display (you know, the one Damien Hrst elevated to be an expensive work of art) and where any sex he has is animalistic and unfeeling. Almost every character in Dead Funny is flawed, tragic: Elenor will probably never get her baby, Richard will never have a meaningful relationship, Nick and Lisa will either have to live with a lie or disintegrate; only camp neighbour Brian, who comes out to no-one’s surprise, ends with any hope. It’s a complex play hidden in a deceptively easy farce, the sort where many will come out having found different things in it. Johnson is a consummate craftsman and this is a calculatedly clever comedy that plays with different conventions albeit reliant, ultimately, on the bedrock of bourgeois drama, naturalism, to engage the audience. And the Torch company succeeds magnificently in that, giving the best ensemble performances I think I have seen here. An outstanding performance from Rebecca Wingate as the bitter, deceived wife who doesn’t know any filthy jokes but offers a line (on fancying a man with an unattractive face, “You don’t look at the mantelpiece when you’re sitting on it”) that’s as funny, witty and dirty as anything Max Miller came up with, gives it its edgy tragic core. But Richard Nichols, a fine actor who only recently has found directors who bring out the best in him, plays the selfish husband with an innocence and amorality that is quite chilling, Lynne Seymour is a very funny and believable airhead, Ken Oxtoby an effortless queen and Liam Tobin manages to combine excellent impersonations with the agony of a wronged and wrecked husband. You can see Dead Funny as an hommage to great British comedians (it opened, uncannily, days after the death of Ronnie Barker) or a risqué farce or a domestic tragicomedy and it needs to be well done to work on its different levels. Peter Doran’s production does that with one of the best productions of his career. |
Reviewed by: David Adams |
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