A torrent of mirthlessness from Miss Toksvig
TWENTY five years ago, BBC TV had quite an amusing sitcom called Waiting For God which featured a salty old bird with a mind of her own. Sandi Toksvig’s new play, billed a comedy, aims towards similar territory, being set in an old people’s home in (ho ho) Gravesend.
The town is flooding. The home is about to be destroyed by a raging torrent – of water, not of mirthless Toksvigian dialogue, though that cannot be discounted.
Not everyone has left the building. Six women, five of them inmates of the home (the other is a young black woman sent to save them), are stuck. What will happen to them? For two hours and more we follow this implausible set-up.
What happens is tiresome, hackneyed and lame but I suppose it at least bears Miss Toksvig’s sardonic trademark.
There is a suicidal Cockney, a racist and kleptomaniac Christian, a droll lesbian (the goodie), a retired actress and a mysterious soul with dementia who is interested in biscuits and sex toys. The youngster (who speaks yoof patois) proclaims her hatred for old people. The only man to appear is a thief. He is played by one Theo Toksvig-Stewart, making his professional debut. Ah, how lucky we are to live in a meritocracy.
Through no fault of its cast, which includes Maggie McCarthy, Joanna Monro and Sheila Reid, this is surely going to be one of the more embarrassing comedies of the year.
A few people in the opening-night audience laughed determinedly – perhaps 30 people clapped when the young character blamed the old folk for Brexit – but from the rest of the clientele there came the sound of knuckles being chewed.
The humour rests largely on comical contrast, having old-age pensioners cracking references to things such as Ant and Dec, vomit, the pop group One Direction and Peter Andre. ‘I can fart the Marseillaise,’ says one of the ladies.
And: ‘You’re at the doctor more often than I manage to open my bowels.’
How perplexing to think that Miss Toksvig is, in some quarters, considered quite the modern Noel Coward.