Ooh Betty! I’ve given ’em a right old giggle
Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em (Richmond Theatre & touring) Verdict: Beret jolly ★★★★✩
HAVING adored Michael Crawford’s Seventies TV sitcom turn as accidentprone Frank Spencer (it was also my father’s favourite programme), I was slightly dreading the touring stage adaptation which stars Joe Pasquale as beret-topped, mackintoshed Frank.
Was there not a strong possibility that one’s childhood memory had exaggerated the comic value of useless Frank progressing from pratfall to slapstick disaster? But Mr Pasquale is a force-field of chaos and has clearly honed his performance with hours of rehearsal.
Though the production remains loyal to the small-screen original, even to the extent of opening with the same, fluted theme tune, Mr Pasquale makes Frank his own creation.
The result is an evening of uncomplicated, very British jollity and it is done with theatrical skill.
You surely remember Frank. Mr Crawford played him as camp, youthful, innocently unaware of his shortcomings. In Mr Pasquale he becomes older, more thickset, a little more gnawed by the realisation that he is a failure.
This lends the show a measure — let us not exaggerate it, but it is undoubtedly there — of pathos. Writer and director Guy Unsworth has enough confidence in the character to end the story on a slightly philosophical note as Frank accepts that tomorrow is another day . . . and may well be worse.
The setting is the Spencers’ suburban house (No 13, of course, with the ‘3’ at a wonky angle because Frank has been busy with his DIY again). We can see the main room, the wobbly-bannistered staircase and occasionally the interior of the adjacent kitchen. Has Frank’s kitchen hatch been installed in a load-bearing wall? Uh-oh.
Set designer Simon Higlett deserves a curtain call of his own for the various inbuilt disasters, exploding taps, plummeting pictures and booby-trapped chairs. When the doorbell rings, Frank has to whack the wall to stop its chimes. When he wants to activate the gramophone he stamps a foot on the floor.
A good minute’s worth of laughter is generated while he grapples with his ironing board, trying to work out how to make it stand upright.
PlAYING Frank’s longsuffering wife Betty, Sarah Earnshaw copies the sympathetic voice Michele Dotrice used in the TV series. Betty has just learned that she is expecting a baby and although she has told her dissolute mother (Susie Blake, who does a great drunk scene) she has yet to find the time to tell Frank.
This creates plenty of potential for misunderstandings. People keep congratulating him. He thinks they are referring to his nascent career as a conjuror.
The plot is too dotty to try to explain. All you really need to know is that the farce is done with speed and conviction, and a moment when Frank goes down the banister will have male theatregoers crossing their legs. David Shaw-Parker plays a hapless priest, Moray Treadwell doubles as a banker and a TV producer and Chris Kiely is that must-have item for any British farce, a policeman who bounces up and down on his heels.
And in the middle of it all: the irresistibly daft, likeable, human Frank of brilliant Mr Pasquale.
For those of us who are unashamed lowbrows, this Some Mothers is more than all right.