Everett shines in touching play
John Mortimer’s famous autobiographical play A Voyage Round My Father has been given a new lease of life by a creative team led by the great Richard Eyre.
It is the story of Mortimer’s own father (played by Rupert Everett) who loomed larger than life in the writer’s own childhood and well into adulthood.
It is a touching tale about father and son, and in this new production the play has been given a light touch and seems a lot more humorous than the original work. The gentle humour and wry wit is really highlighted in the performance by all actors.
It is a thought provoking piece which shows Everett (My Best Friend’s Wedding, The Happy Prince) in one of his most challenging roles.
He is monumental as the eccentric, sceptical old man, the quintessential Englishman more in love with his garden than real life or family. But it is an affectionate portrayal of the old man and Everett is totally committed to the role, looming larger than life at times and delivering Mortimer’s acerbic lines with great wit and humour in the grand old English style.
His is the world of English gardens and Panama hats, the train to London and delivering anecdotes of some of his cases as a divorce barrister. He hates visitors. It is his worst nightmare if someone is coming to visit and we just love his honesty, it is very funny and endearing at times.
Bob Crowley’s pastoral set takes us right into the garden, it is where every scene is played out adding a real touch of Englishness to the drama. The set is full of trees and birdsong and all meals are taken outside. It is a lovely looking stage and it adds a gentleness to the story, the old man’s love of nature being one of his saving graces.
It also adds a sadness to this coming-of-age story of father and son and the play is very touching at times, the humour in Mortimer’s lines given a lot more space to breathe than in previous productions. We know the blind old man will never see his beloved garden again and this is poignant in this production.
Everett gives a touching and humorous performance and the full house audience in Bath loved him, his comic timing and natural sarcasm added a new humour to Mortimer’s famous lines. And his walk as a blind man is pretty perfect, it is a massive performance.
The way Mortimer presents his unusual parents in a humorous way allows us to laugh at some of the more eccentric themes in the play.
For example, the fact his father, a divorce barrister, is blind is never mentioned in the family, it is never talked about in the stiff-upper-lip household, a small family who live in a classic English house in the countryside of Turville Heath, near Oxfordshire.
Mortimer was an only child and the lack of demonstrative love shown to him in his childhood forms part of the comedy in the play, it is given a light hearted touch in this new production.
It is a strong cast. Jack Bardoe as the son is endearing and plays both the child and adult convincingly, he has achieved a necessary chemistry with Rupert Everett which is very touching at times.
It is a sad play, particularly at the end, the audience knows the boy will never be as great as his father but it is a tender sadness, not bitter or cruel, Mortimer’s lines are cleverly written and performed so that even at his most cantankerous we share the boy’s love for his ageing father.
The father and son theme is a complex relationship no more so than in this autobiographical work by the writer who famously gave us the great Rumpole of the Bailey, three decades of pre-netflix television courtroom drama remembered by many.
Julian Wadham (The English Patient) is magnificent as the headmaster, giving a most un-woke rendition of the teacher with old fashioned English public school boy humour.
The sex education scene where he tells the young boys to take a cold bath when they feel the urge to masturbate is hilarious, as is his explanation of wet dreams.
A Voyage Round My Father is a touching new production of a famous classic by one of our most celebrated contemporary writers, given a new lease of life by a talented cast led by Rupert Everett in one of his most challenging roles.
A Voyage Round My Father appeared at the Theatre Royal Bath from Thursday, September 28 to Saturday, October 7.