… and John Cleese rewrites Feydeau with coarse, cheap jokes
Theatre
Bang Bang
Mercury Theatre, Colchester
John Cleese has given the world many moments of utterly sublime comedy but, alas, his adaptation of a minor Georges Feydeau is unlikely to add much to the gaiety of the nation. Cleese is a master of surreal British slapstick; Feydeau the author of classic Belle Epoque farce. What a pity neither are well served by this production, even if it is directed by Cleese’s old mucker Nicky Henson, who back in the day guest-starred in Fawlty Towers.
Feydeau’s romp, originally entitled Monsieur Chasse!, centres on the sexual deceptions of a high-society couple who end up bed-hopping in the same hotel. Leontine has been reluctantly persuaded by an amorous doctor to have an affair with him in order to get revenge on her husband Duchotel, who has been indulging in trysts under the guise of hunting trips. Complicating things further is a lusty nephew in pursuit of the same woman as his uncle. Trousers are swapped, a letter is mislaid, and at least two characters take refuge in a wardrobe. What larks!
Or there might have been, had Henson’s creaky old production been faster and more furious. I love farce, but I couldn’t share in the laughter at the Mercury. As doors are slammed, lies are spun and a couple of policemen pop up on the hotel balcony, I kept waiting to be reduced to a state of helpless paralysis. It never happened.
Characters in farce need to be both unlikeable and capable of making the audience care intensely about their predicament. That never happens here. That fine actor Oliver Cotton blusters about amusingly enough as Duchotel, blithely unaware he is being played to the hilt by Caroline Langrishe’s no-nonsense Leontine, but you never sense there’s much personally at stake. Intriguingly, there’s more than a hint of Sybil and Basil Fawlty on display as Duchotel tries to persuade Leontine that the contents of a butcher’s hamper are the spoils of a good day’s shoot. You wonder whether Cleese should have taken the role of Duchotel himself.
Instead, Cleese seems to have contented himself with stuffing the original with coarse, cheap jokes. When Richard Earl’s charmless doctor is rejected by Leontine, he tells her to shove it where the sun don’t shine. Sorry to be prudish, but I could have done without such crudities.
Characters keep breaking the fourth wall to inform the audience what a nightmare it all is, but being told a situation is getting out of control is not the same as feeling it. Disappointing.