Dundee Rep Theatre, 10 February 2004 then touring

THIS IS what I was going to say: I was going to say that Terry Johnson’s comedy is showing its age. That despite premiering only a decade ago, it is already looking anachronistic in its focus on dead British comedians – the likes of Frankie Howerd, Benny Hill, and Morecambe and Wise. I was going to say that this production by Borderline Theatre Company, well acted though it is, seems out of step with the times in a way that the last Scottish production did not – and that was at Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum as recently as 1997.

That was what I was going to say. But then I read in the paper that the Two Ronnies have been reunited by the BBC and have begun work on their first series for 17 years. So what do I know? Barker and Corbett might not be dead, but they epitomise the strain of British humour in which Johnson is interested. With its roots in the music hall, it is family entertainment that plays on, but never subverts, the audience’s repressions. It varies from the silly to the suggestive. But however smutty it gets, it is never obscene.

Johnson’s conceit is to take five characters, four of whom are members of the idol-worshiping Dead Funny Society, and to see how their “real” lives measure up to the clichés and archetypes of music hall comedy. Richard (Rod Matthew) is a gynaecologist for whom studying women’s private parts is not a joke but a bit of a bore. No sooner has the play started than he’s dropping his trousers – boxer shorts and all – not for a cheap laugh but in the interests of pleasing his sex-starved wife (a ferocious Annette Staines).

That Richard is having an affair with his best friend’s wife (Gail Watson); that said friend (Barrie Hunter) is infertile; and that their single male friend Brian (Steven McNicol) is gay results not in comedy punchlines but real dramatic dilemmas. In the play’s most satisfying moment everything comes together in a massive custard pie fight, uniting the twin themes of comedy and drama.

When it works, as it does repeatedly in the second half of Brian Pettifer’s production, it is very funny, thanks in no small part to the company’s excellent impressions of old comedy routines. There’s no question that the audience goes home laughing. But whether the Two Ronnies are coming back or not, there’s something dislocated about the play which means it takes longer to hit home than it should.

© Mark Fisher, 2004