Charmed by the boy who would be Bono
Chasing Bono (Soho Theatre) Verdict: Gentle comedy
★★★✩✩ The Messiah (The Other Palace) Verdict: Dated satire
★★✩✩✩
NEIL McCORMICK has made a sideline out of failure. Rock critic McCormick was a Dublin schoolmate of U2 front-man Bono. As teenagers they were friendly rivals but only one made it to global fame.
Some men might let that sour them, but Mr McCormick wrote a biographical book which gently took the mickey out of himself and, along the way, described the perils of the music business. It takes generosity of spirit and self-knowledge to observe that Bono once offered you a record deal but you turned it down because you thought you were bigger than him.
This story of ill-fated ambition, already a film, has been turned into a stage comedy by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais. Their past work includes Porridge, The Likely Lads, Auf Wiedersehen, Pet and The Commitments; all those classics are echoed in this show.
The production falls just short of four stars because honourable failure is, ultimately, of limited dramatic power. Had McCormick been a bad egg who deserved a comeuppance, that would have been more gripping. Instead this is a tale of genial acceptance of destiny — quirky but lacking tension.
The story opens with 24-year-old McCormick (played well by Niall McNamee) being kidnapped by a gangster (Denis Conway). We are in a remote Co. Offaly farmhouse. In a later scene its ceiling evaporates to let the top space be used for different settings.
The gangster wants journalist McCormick to write a hagiographical article about him for the newspapers. This narrative device allows for some Porridge- style banter. The young McCormick laments the stability of his family life (successful artists need unhappiness, he feels).
‘If I was robbing a bank, me mam would knit me a balaclava,’ he muses. The gangster tells the gangly would-be pop star: ‘U2 are conquering America. You haven’t even conquered your own haircut.’ Bono (an eerily convincing Shane O’Regan) comes across as a Godfearing, decent bloke.
One of the attractive things about the story is that envy is absent. Throw in a dim-witted crime-world thug (Ciaran Dowd),
a long- suffering brother (Donal Finn), some pleasant strumming of guitars, and you have a workmanlike yet charming evening.
PATRICK Barlow’s THE MESSIAH, which spoofs the Nativity and old- school theatricals, first ran in 1983.
In that pre-internet age, when Monty Python’s Life Of Brian had only been out four years, it may have been enough to spin out a soft-hitting satire about Mary and Joseph for a couple of hours. Today it feels slow, dated, strained
and untruthful. This comedy incorporates music from Handel and others, sung by ripe diva Leonora Fflyte (Lesley Garrett). The other two performers are Hugh Dennis and John Marquez.
Mr Dennis’s character, Maurice Rose, is a blazered, provincial, didactic actor-manager while Mr Marquez is Ronald Bream, his dim underling.
Mr Marquez could be doing an impersonation of Sir Mark Rylance. Mr Dennis delivers his lines — there are a lot of them — in
the sort of voice Peter Cook used for whining bores. The script aims for laughs by means of stage mishaps such as missed cues and dodgy scenery. None felt fresh.
The dry ice machine is activated. I thought: ‘Bet it makes Leonora Fflyte cough.’ Sure enough, Miss Garrett held a hand to her chest and began spluttering. She’s a creamy old pudding, our Lesley.
We are told the infant Christ will be called ‘Wonderful, Counsellor, T’rific, Brill,’ yet the show mocks theatre more than it satirises the
New Testament. This is the real problem. Stage luvvies are now earnest metropolitan Lefties. Writer- director Barlow should have rewritten his script.
Things improve shortly before the interval with some light audience participation, spectators being invited to hurl rude words from the stalls. Had I been asked, I would have shouted: ‘Boring!’