Peter Viney's Blog

Directed by Sean Foley
Written By Hamish McColl, Sean Foley (and Eddie Braben)

Chichester Festival Theatre
Wednesday 9th February 2022

14.30

CAST
Dennis Herdman – Dennis
Thom Tuck – Thom
Mitesh Soni- Arthur, their friend from the pub

The play (franchise?) has been around since 2001, when the original version was directed by Kenneth Branagh. This is the 20th Anniversary Tour, from the Birmingham Repertory, directed by Sean Foley (which was the main appeal for us). In the original version, Hamish McColl and Sean Foley were a comedy duo, who decide to keep going by becoming a Morecambe and Wise tribute act. They used their own names, Hamish and Sean. So their 2022 replacements use the actors’ real names, Dennis and Thom (with a silent H).Mitish Soni is the essential pal from the pub doing the other parts … the Brummy accent reveals the Birmingham Rep origins. Why do Birmingham accents attract laughter so readily on stage? They do.

Morecambe and Wise are TV history, but back in their day I admit that I never really liked them. They were “OK,” what you watched because your mum was round on Christmas Day, you’d had too much to drink, indigestion, and you couldn’t be bothered to watch anything else. Twenty-eight million people in 1977 felt the same way. I found them mainly unfunny.

I found the Two Ronnies vastly more entertaining, both with sketches (written by Ronnie Barker, as Gerald Wiley) and also their large scale music routines, which were more polished than the Morecambe and Wise efforts. Far better scripts too (Fork handles)- Eddie Braben gets a writing credit on this play for the original creaky Morecambe and Wise lines. Morecambe and Wise pastiched 1950s variety show comedy, but they were also the tail end of it, and still part of it. Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett were early satirical TV comedy, starting with The Frost Report in 1966.

Back in 2001, you didn’t need that long a memory to think of Morecambe and Wise. Eric died in 1984, Ernie in 1999. So now we’re adding another twenty years to the memory. Eric’s been gone thirty-seven years. Will it stretch? I guess Bath and Chichester’s audience age range should fit, but is it too long ago for a general audience? The night before, in spite of our expensive tickets, we debated whether it was worth going at all. Sixty-six miles each way? Neither of us were looking forward to it. So maybe we went in with a negative bias.

THE PLAY

So, we have an unsuccessful comedy duo, as Dennis (Dennis Herdman) and Thom (Thom Tuck) performing their old routines. If Morecambe and Wise were pastiche 50s variety, this adds another level … a pastiche of a pastiche of 50s variety. So we have layers of the onion.

Thom wants to produce ‘the play what he wrote’ (in Ernie Wise style), A Tight Squeeze for the Scarlet Pimple. Dennis wants to shift to being a Morecambe and Wise tribute act. The format lets them repeat Morecambe and Wise classics, with the shared bed at the end, the front of curtain messing around and finally the guest star. We may remember (if we’re ancient enough) the series of famous supposedly bemused actors and newsreaders guesting on the Morecambe and Wise Show in Ernie’s plays. Newsreader Angela Rippon’s legs in 1977 became legend with an older audience.

In the tour, the guest star changes. Reviews of Bath Theatre Royal a couple of weeks earlier had Tom Hiddlestone as the mystery guest. Chichester lists nine potential “famous” mystery guests, and I’ve only even heard of three of them … Tom Hiddlestone, Adrian Lester and Charles Dance. They’re famous enough for the original productions. I looked up the others. OK, I know who some of them are now, but they are not the level of our nightly long-legged newsreader. BUT we also had Tom Hiddlestone in Chichester and that was a bonus.

There’s a problem especially with the first half. “So bad it’s good” is terribly hard to do, and the duo’s act before they decide to pastiche Morecambe and Wise is supposed to be “so bad it’s good.” Except it’s not. They’re not. They’re just loud. A slapstick smack across the gob is supposed to make you wince in the audience because it looks and sounds so real. It never did here. I’m hypercritical, I did lime lights on Tommy Cooper (and Ken Dodd and Mike Yarwood) two shows a night, six nights a week for entire summers. Tommy Cooper’s “so bad it’s good” conjuring tricks were based on precision micro-second timing night after night. They haven’t got that comic timing. The slapstick, though elaborate and physically demanding, looks contrived. We thought the first half was dire. The other thing, compare with The Play That Goes Wrong where all the special effects and props work perfectly. Not here.

They were full of energy. Dennis’s USP is long-legged gangling walks, beautifully done. But the script is just too old hat, far past its “Best Before” date. I don’t think we even sniggered once in the first half. I’d heard them virtually all. I’ll add the show suffered from extreme matinee gabble from all three actors (get through it fast, there’s another show tonight) plus their head mics were over-amplified. They all sounded amplified, while in Doubt two weeks ago, you could see the mics taped to the back of the actors necks, but it simply rendered them clear and audible in this huge theatre. They never sounded mic’d. Nor did Tom Hiddlestone here. If you’re going to sound as if you’re using a microphone, you may as well hold one. To me it was bad sound, though because we were right at the front we would have heard them easily without mics, so maybe that exaggerated the effect.

I think they had an issue with the massive stage and wrap around audience. They had set up their three lots of curtains at the back to create a proscenium, and white floor delineated their acting area, largely ignoring the huge black semi-circle at the front. The frequent pairing of Bath an Chichester keeps causing issues. Yes, they are both great theatres with an established public. However, they are chalk and cheese. Going from its origin at Birmingham Rep, to Bath’s tight traditional stage to these wide open spaces with audience right at your sides has to throw your comic timing.

Around us, and we were in a £37 a ticket Row B seat, six left in our near proximity during the interval. Ouch. I counted the empty seats. Over to my right, three left actually during the first half … got up, and walked out during the show. That’s as bad a response as you can possibly get (unless the restaurant has caused mass food poisoning), though it gave us a great view in the second half over empty seats. No one was left in front of us. At half time, we would have left it if it had been Bournemouth or Poole. Having driven 66 miles we elected to stay. But only just. We debated leaving there and then. We both wished we hadn’t come at that point.

The second half is considerably better, mainly because of Tom Hiddlestone, whose mic was not wound up to eleven. He sounded perfectly natural. Wasn’t that true of those original Christmas Shows of the 70s? The humour was the bemused serious actor plunged amidst bizarre and apparently inept comedians? Mitesh Soni came into his own as ‘The French’ surrounded by puppets. A very good scene is when they finally agree to be Morecambe (the tall one with glasses) and Wise (the short one). In the scene, Thom (the short one) wants to be Eric, the one with glasses and does a very funny Eric Morecambe imitation against his own height and appearance.

The lines were better too. They were updated … they mentioned the issue of this particular theatrical space . They had much fun with ‘a comte’ and more with ‘a miserable comte.’ The A Tight Squeeze for the Scarlet Pimple scenes are at last funny with good pantomime effects, though they owe a great deal (all? ) to the New Vic’s 1988 production of a Tale of Two Cities starring Mickey O’Donaghue which was much funnier. Hiddlestone has instant charisma. There are the classic jokes, getting his name wrong, him delivering the mangled script with pained looks aside.

The bed scene is classic Morecambe and Wise. In the original scripts, they always shared a double bed. There was never a hint that they were gay. It was based on touring theatres in the 1950s, when for economy you booked a double room. If you were lucky you got twin beds but many traditional hotels had double beds. We sometimes had to share them when travelling with bands.

The second half inclines you much more to empathize with Dennis and Tom, and we finally get to like them as Morecambe and Wise right at the “Give me Sunshine” end.

It received universal acclaim and awards back in 2001-2003. It got a lot of bums on seats in a large theatre today. This tour got a 5 star review from The Guardian. Most reviews are ecstatically positive.

Why didn’t we rate it? I guess those summers of twelve shows a week make me jaded on comedy. We did broad comedy / slapstick stage shows for English learners for ten years – we’ve done the lowest common denominator anything for a laugh ourselves. We love pantomime … and significantly the glowing December 2021 reviews compare it to pantomime and cite pantomime. But it’s February.

To us, it’s past “Best before” and no longer works, and in spite of enormous energy, they only get away with it because of the guest star. Odd as Sean Foley directed plays are some of the funniest we’ve seen. Dennis Herdman has enlivened several plays greatly for us. I just think the script / concept hasn’t aged well or perhaps it just can’t match the Play That Goes Wrong series technical quality now. I’m also convinced that the stage business in 2001 was heavily influenced by Micky O’Donaghue’s New Vic company of the late 80s / early 90s, with The Canterbury Tales, Robin Hood, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and A Tale of Two Cities. I saw all of them twice, and a couple of them three times. What is really strange is that Micky O’Donaghue and New Vic have virtually no internet presence or reference, yet at the time they were packing theatres.

We are swimming right against the current here in our largely negative reactions. However, I’m a good judge of laughter in a large theatre and I’ve heard it way louder.

The Bath production (with Tom Hiddlestone) was filmed so you’ll be able to judge for yourself.

First half: 1 stars
Second half: 2 to 3 stars

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID

To be fair, I’ll quote them. We must agree to disagree.

Domenic Cavendish, The Telegraph *****

Mark Lawson, The Guardian, *****

This revival is directed by Foley, a master of farce. At startling but comprehensible speed, wordplay, sight gags and slapstick constantly compete to top each other. The avalanche of laughs spans trick arms and legs, joke bread loaves, botched magic tricks and, hardest of all to replicate, the most sublime of Braben’s running gags. That involved classical actors – Glenda Jackson, Diana Rigg, Michael Redgrave – inveigled into delivering the anti-syntactical, arrhythmic lines of the plays “what” Ernie wrote.

Mark Lawson, The Guardian

Clare Brennan, The Observer ****

All the classic elements are present and deliciously correct: sets, gags, songs, yellow curtain and guest artist. Don’t know the actual Morecambe and Wise? No need. This beautifully delivered production is a classic in its own right.

Clare Brennan, The Observer

Clive Davis, The Times ****

Twenty years after it first swept into the West End, Hamish McColl and Sean Foley’s celebration of Morecambe and Wise — packed full of all the right words, but not necessarily in the right order — is ideal entertainment for this time of year. This evening’s cameo from Tom Hiddleston as the mystery guest added a sprinkling of stardust.

Clive Davis, The Times

Diana Parkes, What’s In Stage ****

It is the contrast of straight and humour which makes The Play What I Wrote such a pleasure to watch – you never quite know what is coming next. Foley and McColl throw in so many references to Morecambe and Wise, the show is peppered with nostalgia and it also hits the funny bone with just plain silliness.

Diana Parkes, What’s On Stage

James Mac, The Reviews Hub:

Providing a masterclass in theatrical comedy, this cast are a shining example that Morecambe and Wise’s uniquely sophisticated daftness really is an art form in itself… and one that they have down to a tee. Paying homage to the comedy duo’s slapstick routines and sketches, they attack the word play and physicality throughout, with gusto and grandeur. Thom Tuck and Dennis Herdman, like Morecambe and Wise themselves, are a match made in heaven. Tuck’s highly strung thespian is the perfect ‘straight man’, delectably camp yet dry, allowing the anarchic Herdman (his contrasting counterpart) the chance to shine, relishing in his gangly and elasticated brutishness, creating the perfect partnership.

James Mac, The Reviews Hub

LINKS ON THIS SITE:

SEAN FOLEY (director, writer)
The Upstart Crow, London 2020
The Man In The White Suit, written by Sean Foley, Bath 2019
Present Laughter, by Noel Coward, Chichester 2018
The Miser, by Moliere,  2017
The Dresser, by Ronald Harewood, Chichester 2017
The Painkiller, Francis Veber, Kenneth Branagh Company 2016
Jeeves & Wooster in “Perfect Nonsense”, tour 2013
The Ladykillers, 2011

DENNIS HERDMAN
Around The World in 80 Days , New Vic 2017 tour
Pericles, Wanamaker Playhouse 2015
Measure for Measure, Globe 2015
The Knight of The Burning Pestle, Wanamaker Playhouse, 2014