Peter Viney's Blog

Vice Versa

by Phil Porter

Directed by Janice Honeyman
Designed by Colin Richmond
Music by Sam Kenyon
Lyrics: Phil Porter & Sam Kenyon

Royal Shakespeare Company, The Swan Theatre
Stratford-upon-Avon
Saturday 17th June 2017, 1.30 pm

CAST:
Felix Hayes- General Braggadacio
Sophia Nomvete – Dexter, general’ servant
Steven Kynman – Feclus, general’s servant
Byron Mondahl – Omnivorus, general’s servant
Ellie Bevan – Volupta, general’s concubine
Jon Trenchard – Terence, the general’s  monkey
Nicholas Day – Philoproximus, the general’s neighbour
Laura Kinman – Impetus, servant to Philoproximus
Geoffrey Lumb – Valentin, Volupta’s lover
Kim Hartman – Climax, a prostitute
Bally Gill – Marsupius
Esther Niles – Leandra
Harriet Slater – Meretrix
Katherine Toy- Melodia
Johnson Wilis – Ocadus

MUSIC

Ian Foster- Sousaphone
Max Gittings – Uillean pipes
Samantha Norman – violin
Kevin Waterman – percussion
John Woolf – keyboards

General Braggadaccio (Felix Hayes) and Dexter (Sophia Nomvete)

It’s hard to credit that Plautus predates the Julius Caesar era by two hundred years.  The programme notes that Roman Comedy evolved from Greek New Comedy. Plautus put a spin on it, introducing songs and dance from native Roman entertainments. Lionel Casson in the introduction to Six Plays of Plautus says that the comparison between Plautus and the Greek original storylines is like My Fair Lady to Pygmalion. The music from Plautus’ plays is lost, but the lyrics survive.

Plautus’ comedy has a long effect from The Comedy of Errors (based on The Menaechmus Twins) to Comedia del Arte (and therefore British pantomime),  Moliére, French farce, and in modern times The Boys From Syracuse, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, Carry On Cleo, Up Pompeii. Frankie Howard as Lurcio in the TV series and film was the ultimate Plautus servant, with license to break the fourth wall and conspire with the audience. The TV series grew out of Howard’s role in A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, which I once saw on tour with Phil Silvers. Phil Porter’s recent work, playing in the West End this year, is his new version of The Miser, which is Moliére’s L’avare, an updating of Plautus’s The Pot of Gold.

Phil Porter here has gone for a female in the crucial narrator / servant role, Sophia Nomvete as Dexter. She is an inspired choice … she can also sing, dance and is perfect at the audience interaction.

Philp Porter has based this play on The Boastful Soldier, with ideas imported from other Plautus plays and a lot of his own plotting.  Up Pompeii’s name Lurcio came from The Boastful Soldier. Having a monkey as a major character became a pantomime device … Dick Whittington’s cat, or Mother Goose. There is an elaborate painted set (as in  a pantomime) and costumes have been carefully made funnier with anachronisms. The General has Superman socks in his sandals in Act One, Venus de Milo socks in Act Two. The cast of slaves and ensemble have blotchy faces, blacked out teeth. Feclus (Stephen Kynman) is just like the unfortunate handyman, Colin, in the 1990s TV sit com, Brittass Empire, so much so that we wondered if that was a conscious or unconscious source for Phil Porter (and why not).

General Braggadaccio (Felix Hayes) centre arrives to applause

We’re in Rome. General Braggadacio (Felix Hayes) has a staff of slaves, Dexter, Feclus and Omnivorus plus a monkey. His next door neighbour (the classic elderly man) is Philoproximus (Nicholas Day). Think of the abandoned siblings plays of Shakespeare and how they need an introduction (Comedy of Errors, Twelfth Night and also The Tempest). Dexter does this back story with the other servants using a washing line with the appropriate clothes hanging on it to explain what happened. Dexter was a servant to Volupta and Valentin, but they were captured by pirates. Dexter and Volupta were sold to the general. Valentin was lost.

But now Valentin has turned up to stay with old family friend, Philoproximus next door. Volupta and Valentin meet up by travelling across the roof (the Swan balcony) to make love. They’re spotted in the act by Feclus who determines to tell his master. Dexter has an idea. Volupta will claim to have a lost identical twin, Drusilla, who is Greek. It is Drusilla who is screwing Valentin. I loved this plot line … neatly reversing the expected twins story by introducing a fake twin. This all leads to many misunderstandings. Act Two is how Dexter and Volupta and the other slaves can force the general to free them so they can escape with Valentin.

L to R: Valentin (Geoffrey Lumb), Dexter (Sophia Nomvete), Philoproximus (Nicholas Day)

Valentin (Geoffrey Lumb) is the nice, constantly smiling, but extremely thick hero. Volupta (Elie Bevan) is the ideal blonde heroine playing the double role with a heavy Greek accent as Drusilla. She uses the classic device of throwing in any Greek word, such as feta.  Feclus and Omnivorus (Byron Mondahl), the male slaves, are a carrot-topped and hilarious double act.  They’re all aided in their efforts to fool the general by Philoproximus, who engages Climax, a prostitute to win the general’s affections. The trouble is, his address book is thirty years old, and she is now a raddled but pregnant hag (a hilarious performance by … and I shall say this only once … Kim Hartman from ‘Allo ‘Allo). The general (Felix Hayes) and his neighbour Philoproximus (Nicholas Day) were both in the 2011 and 2012 RSC seasons together through five plays.

Volupta (Ellie Bevan) and the General (Felix Hayes)

One of the highlights comes in Act Two, when Ocadus (geddit) delivers a huge crate of groceries, which Dexter has to distribute at high speed with a pun for every item which she hands to Feclus and Omnivorus (wine, quail, corn, wafers, ham):

While you were gone … no doubt WINEing about our play, QUAILing at its CORNy jokes and WAFER thin HAMmy characters …

The slaves and the Ocadus delivery. L to R: Feclus (Steven Kynman), Dexter (Sophia Nomvete), Omnivorus (Byron Mondahl) … Act 2 “fungi” for “fun guy”

She got a well-deserved round of applause at the end of it, and the programme says the play has the greatest number of props ever used at the RSC. As she does this at such speed, picking up the items they must be so carefully arranged inside the crate,

Music from The Monkees, sorry, Monkeys

Music is vital. The big production number that opens Act Two Till You’ve Seen Rome is worthy of a major musical with an array of funny costumes, foot scooters labelled Vespa, a huge plate of spaghetti, Italian flags, funny waiters. The music with horn amplified violin, squeezebox, Sousaphone is played by musicians in monkey costumes, and Sousaphone is an intrinsically funny instrument, providing a lead melody line at times, “live” farting at others.

There is also a most welcome return of the pre-show at The Swan. As we take our seats, an artist(Johnson Willis, also Ocadus) is drawing audience members (with an emphasis on members) and a guy is trying to sell fake jewellery while we get cheerful music from violin and piano accordion.

L to R: Philoproximus, Volupta pretending to be Drusilla, The Monkey (Jon Trenchard), Feclus, General Braggadacio

It’s not so much a laugh a minute, as a laugh every five seconds. Rather like Phil Porter’s version of The Miser (with Lee Mack & Griff Rhys Jones) there is an aspect where it becomes slightly relentless, but that is the genre. Every character is BIG and BROAD, which is just what Plautus was like. It does veer to pantomime often (though ruder than most), but then pantomime is another descendant of Roman comedy. There are references to Donald Trump.  The general plans to “build the city walls higher and make Rome great again!” but that “and make (X) great again” line is obligatory in comedy in 2017. It always gets the laugh too. I bought the play script … the RSC does it at a knockdown £4.99 and hopefully sells lots. Chichester has been doing scripts at £9.99 and selling few. The Royal Court is even cheaper than the RSC and it replaces the programme. Anyway, I can’t find the line there, so I’m glad to see that the text evolves with performance, as it should with broad comedy. The general declares at the end “Infamy! Infamy … All of you are against me!” This is a well-known quote. Kenneth Williams as Julius Caesar confronted by Brutus and the plotters in Carry On Cleo … “Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me.” I would point out that “against me” isn’t funny. It has to be “in for me.” However, maybe it’s an intentional switch to confound those of us who were finishing the line in our heads. In this sort of play, with brilliant comic actors, I’d expect to go back at the end of the run and find other additions and bits of business.

Our two major reviewers suggest that the RSC might try an original Plautus for a change. Back to Lionel Casson quoted above:

(Plautus) did his level best to make (the audience) laugh from the belly. Without a second thought he would interrupt the flow of the action for a scene of pure slapstick or for a series of lowbrow jokes; he made up broadly comic names to label his characters; he explained every turn of the plot to make sure the slowest wits could follow it; he even explained the jokes to make sure everyone got them. At all costs he kept the plot and action boiling, the stream of gags and puns and comic alliterations flowing.(Lionel Casson “Six Plays of Plautus”)

I would say that Phil Porter captures the spirit of Plautus perfectly for a modern audience. If you did an original Plautus straight, you’d have to add the missing music and dance back in. You’d need to commission a new literal translation first, then depart from it to create a new script. For certain, contemporary references would have been added to fit the week the Romans were seeing a play. Vice Versa does all that.

The only reduction from a full marks review is that necessarily the true shock of unexpected comedy isn’t there. The jokes are predictable, but that’s true of pantomime. It’s a bit like Christmas cracker jokes … foreigners can’t grasp that the appeal of them is the groan of recognition. We love that.

Fabulous cast. Flat out ensemble playing. Four stars (plus a bit, but not quite five)

****
WHAT THE CRITICS SAID

4
Michael Billington, The Guardian ****
Ian Shuttleworth, Financial Times, ****
Michael Davies, What’sonstage ****
Anne Cox, Stage Review, ****
James Garrington, Reviews Hub, ****
3
Domenic Cavendish, Telegraph, ***
2
Dominic Maxwell, The Times **
Ben Kulvicht, The Stage **

There’s something unsettling about watching a prostitute mocked for her age, or a woman dressed in a translucent Orientalist costume adopting an exaggerated foreign accent, played for comic effect.

Oh, dear. Well, I laughed myself silly.

LINKS ON THIS BLOG:

PHIL PORTER
The Miser, by Moliére,  adapted by Sean Foley & Phil Porter, 2017
A Mad World My Masters, RSC 2013 Edited by Sean Foley & Phil Porter

FELIX HAYES
The Tempest, RSC 2012 (Trinculo)
Twelfth Night, RSC 2012 (Fabian)
Comedy of Errors, RSC 2012 (Dromio of Ephesus)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, RSC 2011 (Snug)
The City Madam, RSC 2011 (Mr Plenty)
Cardenio, RSC 2011 (Shepherd)

SOPHIA NOMVETE
As You Like It, Globe 2013 (Audrey)
Noises Off, Nuffield, 2016 (Brooke Ashton)

NICHOLAS DAY
The Tempest, RSC 2012 (Gonzalo)
Twelfth Night, RSC 2012 (Sir Toby Belch)
Comedy of Errors, RSC 2012 (Egeon)
The City Madam, RSC 2011 (Lord Lacy)
Cardenio, RSC 2011 (Don Bernado)
Platonov, Chichester 2015 (Col. Triletsky)

BYRON MONDAHL
Salomé, RSC 2017
King Lear, RSC 2016 (Oswald)
Cymbeline, RSC 2016 (Philario)
Hamlet, RSC 2016 (Professor, Ambassador)

JON TRENCHARD
Salomé, RSC 2017
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, RSC 2016 (Philostrate)