Boudica’s woad to ruin is a cracking yarn
TWO thousand years ago Britain was ruled by a European empire — Rome — and the natives became restless. Queen Boudica of the Iceni (an Essex tribe) revolted. She came to a sticky end, but survives in memory as a heroic fighter for British sovereignty.
Brexitish Boudica, sometimes called Boadicea, has inspired a watchable new play at Shakespeare’s Globe. Written by Tristan Bernays partly in iambic pentameter verse, it aims for an olde worlde flavour, but has plenty of lively fighting and 21stcentury attitudes. The casting is tiresomely politically correct. There are endless F words, about 90 per cent more than needed.
Still, much of the show is crackingly good fun, even if it sometimes wobbles into Life Of Brian territory.
Gina McKee may seem a willowy, fragile figure to play Boudica, but she throws herself into the fray and gives our heroine plenty of audacity when dealing with over-mighty Roman officialdom (Samuel Collings does a devilishly camp turn as the Procurator).
During the first half, when the rebellion propels the narrative, it is not difficult to believe in this warrior queen. Credibility only creaks in the second half when she bafflingly names the more timid of her two daughters as her successor. The smiting and lancing of the battle scenes, complete with zip wires, is lustily done, Miss McKee’s queen at one point skewering a Roman with the attentive care of Delia Smith loading her kebab stick with marinated lamb chunks.
Some moaning Roman sentries are pure Monty Python, effing and blinding about the British weather. A gigantic chap called Abraham Popoola plays Badvoc, bellicose king of the Belgics. He could be Mr T’s grumpy brother.
Throw in some cod Shakespearean language — ‘fie, you trenchant blade!’ — and Forbes Masson as a British chieftain who is a ringer for Billy Connolly and we have a play that does not quite know if it is postmodern action yarn or tragic myth. Rome’s challengers paint themselves in blue war paint — the woad to ruin.
After a drawn-out anti-climax, the play concludes that despite Boudica’s death, ‘this land will crack’. The cheers from the audience during the earlier rebellion scenes — some people were actually ululating as the Romans were biffed — suggests great public appetite, largely unmet by our theatres, for dramatic entertainment in which the European elite takes one in the eye.
WESTMINSTER City Council has done something rather good and allowed a temporary theatre to be erected on the large traffic island next to Marble Arch. Its auditorium feels like a circus — circular, ceiling drapes, hard seats — and Sir Cameron Mackintosh is using it to revive Clarke Peters’ jazzy song-and-dance show Five Guys Named Moe.
What a simple format it has. A boozy bachelor, Nomax, sits listening to the radio late one night, mulling on his love life. Suddenly five musical guys (left) appear out of the radiogram, like genies. They are soon joshing Nomax about his chauvinist ways, urging him to become a more attentive, honourable boyfriend.
Along the way we are given some slim-hipped, ankle-tapping dance numbers and plenty of goodnatured humour.
EVERYTHING zips along to the mid-20th century jazz of the late Louis Jordan, a forgotten maestro of the jukebox age. The music is played by a top-rate six-piece band — really good brass and sax.
Songs include Is you Is Or Is you Ain’t My Baby?, What’s The Use Of Getting Sober? and the liberating I Like ’Em Fat Like That!’, a hymn to love handles. The performances by Edward Baruwa, Ian Carlyle, compact Idriss Kargbo, chunkier Emile Ruddock, Horace Oliver and Dex Lee are tip-top.
Warning: there is audience participation, to a degree that will make the toes of many British theatregoers curl like croissants. If you do not wish to be hauled on stage, avoid the posh cabaret-style seats in the inner circle.