Peter Viney's Blog

By Richard Bean and Oliver Chris

Directed by Emily Burns
Set and costume design by Mark Thompson
Composer Paul Englishby
Musical Director Chris Traves

Olivier Theatre, National Theatre, London

Saturday 16th July 2022, 14.30

Caroline Quentin – Mrs Malaprop
Laurie Davidson – Jack Absolute
Natalie Simpson – Lydia Languish
Kerry Howard – Lucy
James Corrigan – Bob ‘Wingnut’ Acres
Jordan Metcalfe – Roy Faulkland
Helena Wilson – Julia Melville
Akshay Sharan – Bikram ‘Tony’ Khattri
Kevin Fletcher – Dudley Scunthorpe
Peter Forbes – Major General Sir Anthony Absolute
Tim Steed – Brian Coventry

plus
Theo Cowan – Peter Kingsman
Shailan Gohil- Flight Sergeant Sampson
Millie Hikasha – ensemble
Chris Jenkins- ensemble
George Kemp- ensemble
Joanne McGuiness – ensemble
Geoffrey Towers- ensemble
Shona White – ensemble

The names … Jack Absolute, Mrs Malaprop, Lydia Languish, Sir Anthony Absolute, Faulkland, Julia. This is Sheridan’s The Rivals updated to 1940 and shifted from Bath to Sussex. But no Lucius O’Trigger. Richard Bean follows on from One Man, Two Guv’nors which updated and rewrote Goldoni’s One Servant Two Masters.

The pre-covid plans were to celebrate The Battle of Britain 60th anniversary in 2020 and we had booked it. Since then they have switched directors, re-cast some roles.

Richard Bean has the track record and One Man Two Guv’nors, and The Hypocrite are two of the funniest plays in years. Caroline Quentin was in The Hypocrite. Oliver Chris has an equally outstanding acting record, including One Man Two Guv’nors and Richard Bean’s Young Marx. I imagine he saw Jack Absolute as a role he could have played, though they also knew that it had to be a young actor. I’d say it’s an actors’ play, in that every one of the principle actors has a part they can get their teeth into. It’s fascinating that the National Theatre is playing it on the Olivier stage, parallel to Much Ado About Nothing next door on the Lyttelton stage. The plays have much in common from a love-hate relationship (Jack / Lydia, Benedick / Beatrice), to much activity with misplaced and redirected love letters, and even a funny attempt at a poem.

The Rivals plot is transported to August 1940, at the height of the Battle of Britain. The RAF has billeted its aircrew at Malaprop Manor, which happens to be right next to their airfield. The pilots fly Hurricanes … Jack Absolute, our comic book hero, then Roy with wobbly legs, Aussie Bob Acres, and Indian pilot Tony (they can’t pronounce Bikram).

Lydia Languish, ward of Mrs Malaprop, is heir to swathes of Sussex, while Jack is heir to most of Devon.They’ve met before and their first meeting echoes Benedick and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing which is down to Sheridan’s original. In this Lydia is a pilot, delivering planes to bases. This really happened, though in fact they were kept off fighter planes until late 1941. We once met an elderly lady who used to do it, and she described how after four years flying everything from single-engined to four engined aircraft, the female pliots had zero chance of an aviation job after 1945.

Everyone is in love with Lydia … brash Aussie Bob, poetic romantic Bikram and of course dashing Jack. So we have three male rivals. The thing is, Lydia fancies the muscular Northern aircraft fitter Dudley Scunthorpe. So they all see him as a rival.

Trouble is, Mrs Malaprop’s servant, Lucy, is in love with that Northern mechanic Dudley. So she and Lydia are rivals. Roy, the only pilot not in love with Lydia, is in love with Julia Melville. She’s extremely posh, a friend of Lydia’s and has joined the army and is driver to Jack’s dad, Major-General Sir Anthony Absolute. He’s come down to talk to his son, and Mrs Malaprop is very much taken with him. Jack decides to get a tattoo and a false moustache, put on a Northern accent, and dress up as Dudley to woo Lydia.

Sheridan’s original was innovative in having four very strong and funny female roles … Lydia, Julia, Lucy, Mrs Malaprop. All four here are very funny indeed.

I’m not doing jokes or plot spoilers. Bean and Chris have clearly thought back to James Corden’s success as the servant breaking the fourth wall and addressing the audience in One Man Two Guv’nors. They have learned not to place all their eggs in one basket, or all their best lines on one actor. Oliver Chris was there in that play alongside Corden. Just about everyone is allowed to address the audience here, though the longer direct to audience pieces are given to Mrs Malaprop (Caroline Quentin) who opens the play, and to Kerry Howard as Lucy.

Mrs Malaprop has a much bigger part now, with new funnier and ruder malapropisms (which are named after Sheridan’s creation). Unlike other reviews, I’ll save them, but suffice it to say she gets both the Count of Monte Cristo and clematis wrong. In this, she’s partly knowing … see her comments on changing the airfield managing officer’s name from Coventry to Daventry and Braintree. She knows she’s doing it. The base commander, Coventry, is lightly gay and unrequited in love.

The play is unusual for a 2022 production. It’s not colour blind. Natalie Simpson playing Lydia is a BAME actor, but she’s not pretending to be anything different. Bikram is a Sikh pilot, Otherwise, people are what they are. It’s not accent blind and it can’t be … a plot hinge is imitating Dudley’s Northern accent. Bob Acres as an Australian oaf from the outback replaces Sheridan’s West country oaf. It’s not gender blind. The female roles are as in Sheridan’s play. The Guardian review leapt on the positive of having an Indian pilot, but there were Indian pilots and Indian troops in 1940.

Bikram ‘Tony’ Khattri is an Oxford-educated poet. Bells rang. Surely Bean and Chris are rather young to have read Frank Richards Billy Bunter stories? Jack Absolute as Bob Cherry with his senior army officer father? Then Bikram Khattri as Huree Jamset Ram Singh? Antipodean Bob Acres as Tom Brown, the New Zealander combined with comic aspects of Bunter? Then of course, Billy Bunters malapropisms became as well-known as Mrs Malaprop’s originals. I wouldn’t try to take any parallels too far, but a public school educated Indian character fits 1940 easily.

There is a major dance routine in Act 2, when Jack and Lydia recall their first meeting at a dance competition. It makes uses of the sizeable ensemble too. Probably more importantly, it showcases Kevin Fletcher (Dudley)’s dancing ability … he was a star on Strictly Come Dancing. His feature dance with Caroline Quentin drew massive applause.

As I pointed out in the Much Ado About Nothing review (we saw it the evening before), covid has made ensembles with detailed programme notes on their roles as understudies a given in 2022. You need them, so use them.

Caroline Quentin is, as expected, fantastic. The scene where she plays the ukulele AND does the splits to reprise her previous music hall career was a showstopper for applause … not the only one.

Bean and Chris delight in the lexicographical dexterity required in scripting Mrs Malaprop’s slips of the tongue, a detectable level of schoolboy glee present in the lady of the manor’s increasingly sexual verbal mashups. Quentin matches their enthusiasm with a performance that, if not a career best, certainly comes close.

Scott Matthewman, The Reviews Hub

Perhaps my only criticism in the entire play is that her opening speech is right at the very front of the semi-circular thrust stage. We were seated to one side and saw a lot of her back, though she did turn to both sides. I think it would work better if she just moved a few paces further back from the extreme front for that speech.

I believe Laurie Davidson is doing the role Oliver Chris might have imagined doing as Jack Absolute. He looks like a dashing hero. He’s funny as well as romantic.

They’re led by Laurie Davidson in the title role in a strikingly assured National Theatre debut. Going from gung-ho self-assurance to wide-eyed desperation, he’s exhilaratingly alive to rapid mood-switches and his rocketing sense of excitement is simply infectious.

David Benedict, Variety

Natalie Simpson as the rich heiress, socialist and pilot exudes self-belief in her role.

James Corrigan as Bob Acres has some of the very best jokes in the play, and yes, they play Australian as intrinsically funny. Some are stereotypical Australian jokes. Think Barry McKenzie, Dame Edna Everidge, Crocodile Dundee. Um, Rolf Harris. I suspect at least a couple are from Barry McKenzie, the 60s cartoon strip in Private Eye. Not quite. On arrival, Bob says My throat’s as dry as a nun’s sandwich! The Barry McKenzie original is I’m as dry as a nun’s nasty. I know, I once looked back, found it and used it in a story where the characters are quoting Private Eye lines.

In another Shakespeare parallel, the “sword duel” from Sheridan changes to a boxing match against Dudley (think the wrestling match in As You Like It), and Dudley turns out to be a champion boxer. Lucy trains Bob how to box .The actual fight is … you have to see it. I won’t tell you.

Kerry Howard as Lucy is the heir to the comic servant as narrator tradition that stretches back through James Corden in One Man Two Guv’nors to Frankie Howard in Up Pompeii to Sheridan and Shakespeare to Plautus. I can’t imagine anyone doing it better. She is close to the James Corden role, but as above James Corden’s extreme prominence made it more difficult to revive the play. Throughout characters comment on the play … I’m just a dramatic device, she says once. I’ll add one spoiler line:

Beautiful rich idiots falling arse over tit in love, and all the bleeding maid gets to do is oil the effing plot delivering love letters to the wrong people.

Lucy

Peter Forbes is the red-faced Major-General Sir Anthony Absolute (Be quiet when I’m SHOUTING!) Another piece of perfect casting. One review complained about old jokes, and there are a couple from him but they are presented as deliberately old jokes and got big laughs. That’s the point. Thn Mrs Malaprop and he have history, not that they know it.

It’s not just ‘funny’ though for large periods the laughs are coming thick and fast at Brian Rix farce levels. Roy (Jordan Metcalfe) is a sensitive lad with wobbly legs when excited. He is desperate to marry Julia (Helena Wilson) so he can at least have sex once before that strong chance of dying in combat.Julia is the conventional pre-1939 woman in contrast to Lydia’s radical (very rich) feminist role.

They play it beautifully. The Roy / Julia romance isn’t just ‘funny’ it reflects what it was like to be a very young fighter pilot in 1940, and to be the girl who was in love with him. I wish there were pictures of them. On the four women, I make notes for my “Best of The Year” article for December. I can’t separate the four women. They’re all on the list.

The sound effects and video projection use multiple speakers to create landing aircraft, and then dog fights swooping and screaming across the theatre and they are projected above us as well as on the rear of the stage. It’s a technical achievement.

There is a major change to Sheridan though. There is a tragic and poignant ending AND they manage to move from comedy to tragedy.

What is most important is the way that two young, just-trained pilots Sampson and Kingsmith arrive at the base to take over as pilots right at the end. (A Harvard was a trainer aircraft for fighter pilots).

Coventry Ever flown a Hurricane?
Sampson No, sir
Coventry You?
Kingsmith Harvards only, sir.
Coventry We’ll try and get you both up before tomorrow. Bit short of machines at the mo’.

Read Patrick Bishop’s Fighter Boys. That’s how it was.

It will be ‘as big’ as One Man Two Guv’nors. The quality is there throughout in the writing … I bought the play text. The set is superb and rooms (Mrs Malaprop’s drawing room, Lydia’s bedroom, Inside the Nissan hut where the pilots sleep) slide in and out of centre stage silently.

OVERALL

We both agreed. Five stars ***** but this one certainly divided the critics.

NOTE FOR THE DIARY: NT LIVE STREAMING TO CINEMAS, 6th OCTOBER 7 pm

LENGTH

Odd. The National Theatre website originally listed it as 2 hours 30 minutes including a 20 minute interval. Then two reviews (which appeared on the Saturday morning just before we saw it) listed it as ‘nearly three hours.’ The notices on the theatre door were revised to 2 hours 40 minutes including a 20 minute interval. We walked out at the end, I switched on my phone. Exactly right. Sharp 14.00 start. Ended 16.40 (or rather we were in the foyer by 16.40). So why did two reviews say nearly three hours? I’ve been at plays on press night. Started nearly ten minutes late (to finish the reception pre-show hospitality) and the interval ran to over 25 minutes (hospitality again, I assume- The Globe used to close off the upstairs café on press night for hospitality). So all respect to the now retired Michael Billington. Once, at Chichester’s Minerva in the interval, I realized I was standing two feet away from him in the interval. He was making rapid notes. It was NOT press night. He was not off enjoying theatre hospitality. He’d clearly come on his own. He looked at me in surprise – I was making notes too, but on my phone.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID

This worried me. I was surprised I was so surprised (and actually angry) at the negative reviews. We are all entitled to a reaction, but I was saddened that some reviewers just failed to see the virtues, or its appeal to so many theatre goers. Look at the age profile of regular playgoers.

It used to be The Times that was out of step, consistently giving lower ratings than everyone else. Recently (since Billington retired) it appears to be The Guardian which has taken over and become humourless. It shouldn’t be political … The Guardian and Telegraph tended to very similar play ratings for years. I read the current review by Arifa Akbar carefully. She really, really didn’t get the play. Nor did Alexander Cohen in The Independent (A paper I avoid except when The i is free in coffee shops and hotels). Worst was Broadway World. It definitely does not fit their pre-set PC agendas. I should not think for a minute that Messrs Bean and Chris could give a flying f*ck.

 the play is very good on showing the war effort to have included commonwealth veterans in the form of an Australian pilot (albeit one who speaks in Aussie-isms much of the time) and an Indian pilot (“everyone calls me Tony because they can’t pronounce Bikram,” he says, in one sharp line) as well as Lydia’s position in the RAF.

Arifa Akbar, The Guardian

That’s what she was looking for. I’ll note that Commonwealth should have a capital C, but proofreading was never The Grauniad’s strong point. She then said:

This is the second consecutive show at the National to glance nostalgically back at a bygone Britain and present a sentimentalised picture. For me, at almost three hours on its final preview night, this comedy felt forced, unoriginal and drawn out.

Arif Akbar, The Guardian

Even more blinkered to a pre-set agenda is Alexander Cohen in The Independent

They both poke fun at British idiosyncrasies, power hierarchies, and social values. But poking fun at these conventions only reinforces them. And whilst when HMS Pinafore premiered, Britain really did rule the waves, today knee deep in social, political, and economic crises, Jack Absolute Flies Again is distinctly unmodern and out of touch with its sepia toned memories of yesteryear and World War Two romance. Nostalgia is not what it used to be.

Alexander Cohen, The Independent

Then we get Broadway World, the worst of all, with a review so unremittingly WOKE it’s as funny as the play … inadvertently:

As it’s become the sad norm, Northern and generally non-RP accents are used to identify and berate the lower-class, who are sexually objectified or mocked by their upper-class counterparts … The issues of the text are mitigated with a token non-white character, Bikram Khattri (who everyone cheerily calls Tony because they can’t pronounce his real name!). But having non-Caucasian actors on a stage doesn’t justify archaic comedic treatment that hides behind the now obsolete brand.

Cindy Marcolina, Broadway World, UK

Oh, dear. Accents. I shall say this only once. Goodbye Inspector Clouseau, Herr Flick, Manuel, Ali G, Harry Enfield’s Greek-Cypriots, Lenny Henry’s Jamaicans and Brummies. Also, note that the comic servant, Lucy, is the erudite character in the play who has ‘read every book in the house.’

This sounds xenophobic, I know, but you probably have to be directly descended from a family in 1940 Britain to “feel” 1940 and The Battle of Britain and its impact. This is part of our history, and it was designed for 2020 to celebrate that. It’s not just ‘British’ either. There were kids in my primary school with Polish Battle of Britain pilot dads and they would have heard and felt the same.

My dad was in the Home Guard, waiting for call up which happened a few months later, defending Bournemouth (Hurn) Airport all night from anticipated paratroop landings. My mum had twin girl evacuees from Southampton and worked in the tea rooms for the troops. She had to carry the twins to the neighbour’s Anderson shelter during the frequent air raid sirens in the night (Bournemouth was a fly-over route to the Midlands). Karen’s dad was cycling to Gloster Aircraft as an apprentice – he later worked on the Gloster Meteor Jet team. Her mum worked in a munitions factory. My aunt was operating searchlights in London, right under the bombers. We heard all those stories at first hand. Like a lot of our matinee audience we found the way it switched from high comedy to poignant sadness genuinely moving.

Go instead to The Standard:

The way Bean and Chris lob anything they find funny into the mix is audacious, but the script is also deceptively finely tuned. This knowing mix of satire, filth, clowning, pastiche, wartime derring-do and romance absolutely hit my sweet spot. It won’t be to everyone’s taste, but not even the hardest heart could entirely resist its machine-gun barrage of humour.

Nick Curtis, The Standard

OR:

Emily Burns’s production is beautifully and sharply paced, and the design is glorious, projections staging battles above our heads in the Olivier. There’s a roof-rousing dance in Act Two, and then a change of tone, which I felt the company handled very well. Whilst it perhaps doesn’t give us the jitterbug dance finale we were anticipating; it does honour The Few. It was just what I, and the audience, needed, a rollicking good night out at the theatre, and Jack Absolute doesn’t just fly, in parts it soars. Expect a West End transfer!

Paul T. Davies, British Theatre. com

OR

Bean and Chris’s dialogue is a joyous blizzard of bawdy Carry-On innuendo, rolled out at such a torrential rate that it’s borderline genius or gibberish — but either way splendidly sends up political correctness and verbal prudery in general. Crucially, the action is sustained by a warmth and generosity of spirit that allows the two writers to pull off a surprisingly emotional finale.

Patrick Marmion, Daily Mail

Marmion is right. It does send up political correctness, and in a challenging way. That’s what irritated the anti critics.

I’m only sorry that The Telegraph review is by Fiona Mountford, not Domenic Cavendish. I’d like to have heard his opinion. I also have a feeling that if this was playing the provinces, it would get far greater acclaim.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID

Five star
Patrick Marmion, Daily Mail *****
Quentin Letts, Sunday Times *****
Neil Norman, Daily Express *****
The Independent (weekly round up) *****

Four star
Clive Davis, The Times ****
Theo Bosanquet, What’s On Stage ****
Nick Curtis, The Standard ****
Miriam Gibson, London Box Office, ****
Scott Matthewman, The Reviews Hub, ****
Demetrios Mattheou, The Arts Desk ****

The reviews that don’t use star ratings are also very positive.
three star
Andrzej Lukowski, Time Out ***
Fiona Mountford, The Telegraph ***
Greg Stewart, Theatre Weekly ***

Then comes these uptight people, watching to find offence and bristling with righteous indignation when they thought they had found it. The Independent managed to give an initial two stars, then amend it to five in the round up.
two star
Arifa Akbar, The Guardian **
Alexander Cohen, The Independent **
Cindy Marcolina, Broadway World **
Holly O’Mahoney, Culture Whisper **

LINKS ON THIS BLOG

THE RIVALS

The Rivals, Watermill Theatre 2018

PLAYS BY RICHARD BEAN
The Duke (film) 2022
Young Marx by Richard Bean and Chris Coleman, Bridge 2017
The Hypocrite, RSC 2017
One Man Two Guv’nors, 2012
Pitcairn, Chichester Minerva Theatre, 2014
The Hypochondriac, Bath Theatre Royal, 2014

PLAY BY OLIVER CHRIS
Ralegh – The Treason Trial, Winchester Great Hall, 2018
OLIVER CHRIS AS ACTOR:
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bridge Theatre 2019
Young Marx, by Richard Bean & Clive Coleman, Bridge Theatre 2017
King Charles III, TV version, 2017
Twelfth Night, National Theatre 2017
Fracked! Or Please Don’t Use The F-Word, Chichester 2016
King Charles III, 2014
One Man Two Guv’nors 2013

CAROLINE QUENTIN
The Provoked Wife, RSC2019
The Hypocrite by Richard Bean, RSC 2017
Relative Values by Noel Coward, Bath Theatre Royal 2013
Me & My Girl, Chichester, 2018

NATALIE SIMPSON
Hedda Tesman, Chichester 2019
Boudica, Globe 2017
King Lear, RSC, 2016 (Cordelia)
Hamlet, RSC 2016  Stratford, (Ophelia)
Cymbeline – RSC 2016 (Guideria)
Measure for Measure, Young Vic, 2015

JAMES CORRIGAN
Coriolanus, RSC 2017
Julius Caesar, RSC 2017 (Mark Anthony)
The Two Noble Kinsmen, RSC 2016 (Paloman)
Othello, RSC 2015 (Roderigo)
Hay Fever, Bath Theatre Royal (Sandy Tyrell)

TIM STEED
Ralegh – The Treason Trial, Winchester Great Hall, 2018
Merchant of Venice, Almeida, 2015

THEO COWAN
Comus, Wanamaker Playhouse 2016