The Ladykillers is a heist heavy on laughs
For every overbearing, preachy play you might have found yourself stuck with at the Shaw Festival, “The Ladykillers” is here to make it up to you.
Consider it this season’s puppy dog show — it just wants to play and be liked. Its sole purpose is to have you grinning for two hours and 20 minutes, and it really can’t be overstated how big a deal that is. Especially after a 2018 Shaw season that seemed intent on agitating people.
The guy responsible for that season, artistic director Tim Carroll, is also the director of this gem that’s based on the 1955 British movie starring Alec Guinness (remade by the Coen Brothers with Tom Hanks in 2004). It is silly and inconsequential. It makes no grand statement, no important point. And you’ll be thankful for it.
Carroll notes in the show program he was urged to do the show by former Shaw artistic director Jackie Maxwell, so it’s one more thing this company can thank her for. It’s not the best show of the season (that’s still “The Glass Menagerie” for now) but it’s absolutely the most crowd-pleasing.
Irish writer Graham Linehan has sped up the movie’s pace, and his knack for TV sketch shows is obvious. The dialogue is snappy, with no lulls, and while the laugh-out-loud moments are few, there’s a constant, comical mood to the thing that’s irresistible.
To that end, Carroll has assembled a finely-tuned cast who play off each other with funny finesse. Canadian theatre treasure Chick Reid is the centrepiece as an elderly British homeowner renting out an upstairs room. Eagerly snatching it up is ‘Professor’ Marcus (Damien Atkins, so good as Sherlock Holmes in last season’s “The Hound of the Baskervilles”) who stresses the need for privacy so
he and his classical band can rehearse.
But they aren’t musicians — a point made obvious in several hilarious scenes. They’re a gang of thieves aiming to rob a delivery to the train station, located next to the house. Like, right next door — every time a train goes by, the lights flicker and the dishes vibrate.
The crew Carroll has gathered for this heist are some of the company’s finest comic actors. Besides Atkins as the well-versed but ill-tempered leader, there’s Martin Happer as the dim-witted muscle; Andrew Lawrie as the cockney clean freak; Ric Reid as the senior con man; and Steven Sutcliffe as a callous killer who doesn’t like old ladies. For good reason, it turns out.
As they plan the deed, Reid is constantly badgering them, bringing tea and begging for a private concert so her catty, old lady friends will come around again. “She’s at that door every 15 minutes,” says Atkins. “It’s like having a geriatric cuckoo clock.”
The antics all unfold on an inventive stage design which shows both the interior and exterior of the house, spinning as needed. It’s a visual treat and a nice change after a few seasons in which the company has noticeably cut corners on its sets.
This one’s a sure bet at Shaw this summer — goofy, but grandly executed. It might just steal the season.