Mad, stupid or brilliant
Lloyd Evans
Squalor Pentameters Well Hung Canal Cafe Theatre Singin' in the Rain Sadler's Wells
In Edinburgh there are 1,695 new shows opening this month. In London there are six. Given this statistical imbalance, I'd say that any producer who opens in London in August must be either mad, stupid or brilliant.
First up, Paul Birtill, whose macabre farce The Lodger enjoyed an extended run at Pentameters (in Hampstead) in May. One of his earlier plays, Squalor, is being revived at the same venue. Birtill is not a writer who commends himself to one's sunnier instincts. The Lodger was about a suicidal poet who embarks on a hopeless affair with a sex-bomb solicitor. But compared with Squalor it was like Muffin the Mule.
Squalor is set in a Liverpool crack-den where two gay heroin addicts with Aids are being menaced by a homicidal gangster in the neighbouring flat, One of the squatters is expecting a visit from his father, Mr Small, who has been paying 'rent' for his son in the mistaken belief that the boy has graduated from Liverpool University.
When Mr Small arrives, it's clear immediately that he's been hoodwinked by his son. yet he persists in his pitiful belief that the broken-down druggie is now 'a BA' with a golden future. This is a peculiarly English strain of humour — the tragedy of thwarted social ambition — and its pedigree reaches back through Mike Leigh and Joe Orton to the drama of the 18th century. Birtill freshens up the material and locates it in a gruesome contemporary setting. It's Abigail's Party on smack.
I'm surprised his work hasn't attracted wider attention. His scenarios alone should recommend him to those notorious fun-seekers at the Royal Court, where the Theatre of Misery has been running since 1956. His outlook may be bleak but even his darkest moments are leavened with gags and weird bursts of comic metaphysics. Mad but brilliant.
At the Canal Café Theatre (Delamere Terrace, London W2), Well Hung is a comedy that tries far too hard to be hilarious. I was baffled to see a sell-out crowd watching a troupe of exhibitionists recite jokes like. 'Let's call it a night.' It's a night.' Pretty stupid. At Sadler's Wells, there's a near-perfect new version of Singin' in the Rain, produced by the Haymarket Theatre, Leicester. The show moves at a wonderful clip. The sets are great, the costumes spectacular. Ronni Ancona, as the fading movie star Lina Lamont, outshines the rest of the cast. She has that rare combination of immediacy, simplicity and durability. Like the tunes in the show, she keeps bobbing pleasantly back into your mind for days afterwards.
The mix of music and romance is enriched with prerecorded film sequences that mimic the absurdities of silent movies and satirise Hollywood's efforts to embrace the technologies of talkies. Sounds like old hat, but these interludes are genuinely hilarious.
There are one or two quibbles. The acting creaks in places. The elderly dialogue could do with some punch-ups. A dance routine in Act 2 is overlong and traps applause in the wrong place. And the title number (Make 'em laugh') should open the second act, not close the first. And how do you do the rain on stage?
The solution was commendably audacious. Pearly strings of water came hissing down from the gantry and gathered in a silvery lake on the boards. This got a huge round of applause, and I immediately sensed that this wasn't quite right. Gasps of amazement at some visual contrivance are one thing, but applause is different. It means the magic has gone. The audience isn't feeling any more; it's thinking, it's calculating 'How will they get rid of the water?'
The question flickered through every mind. Impromptu drainage experts began whispering theories to their companions. For a few distracting moments the stalls became a noisy college of hydrodynamics, with rival solutions being argued, seconded, amended, refuted. No one had their eyes towards the front where poor Adam Cooper was bravely failing to re-create one of the best-known scenes in movie history. Having soaked himself to the skin, he was bundled offstage in a mountain-rescue blanket to be heated up with hairdryers and cocoa. A strange disappointment because elsewhere his dancing was immaculate.
The same goes for his partner Simon Coulthard whose solo performance of 'Make 'em laugh' was the highlight of the first act. On its pins this show is a real &Men And to my particular delight it featured an oddity without which no musical is complete — a chorus-member desperate to be noticed who puts far too much into every throwaway gesture. I love that. Just brilliant.
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