WHAT A DUD, MR MELDREW
Fluffed lines from TV’s Richard Wilson AND an unfunny Alan Bennett play . . . I don’t believe it!
THERE is no crueller satirist than time. In 1968, Alan Bennett wrote a revueplay called Forty Years On. He mocked the old ruling class, its absurd ideals, casual snobberies. Back in those days Bennett, part of the Sixties youth boom, was a bright new thing, Mr Cheeky.
Seen today — 50 years on — the piece tastes stale, its drolleries no longer funny, its ideals faded. The young Bennett would not have shown much mercy to such a sorry relic.This is an odd play for Daniel Evans to choose for the start of his artistic directorship at Chichester. Add to that a disastrous central performance from Richard Wilson (who has been ill recently) and you have an evening of yawns, wristwatchglancing and, quite often, awkward embarrassment.
Mr Wilson may once have been perfect as TV’s Victor Meldrew, but he tends to be the same in most parts he undertakes. Television often makes stars of indifferent and lazy actors. Here, he plays the headmaster of a minor public school in southern England. The head is in his final term and a school play has been organised to entertain the parents (ie, the audience). This play within a play duly forms most of Bennett’s offering.
The boys and staff upset the headmaster by putting on a series of skits, some of them lightly vulgar, which skate over the history of Britain in the 20th century so far.
We are offered sketches about the world wars, the Bloomsbury set, Bertrand Russell and more. Weak puns abound. There are mild allusions to sex.
Danny Lee Wunter, Lucy Briers, Jenny Galloway and Alan Cox try valiantly to inject some life into otherwise leaden proceedings. The Chichester audience sat there, initially all smiles, waiting for that nice Mr Bennett to enthral them with his witticisms, but slowly the smiles froze and the chuckles ran dry.
Mr Wilson, apart from making little effort to inhabit his character, has not mastered his lines and has to use a text (far from subtly — it’s a bit like watching one of the mini-plays in Bruce Forsyth’s old Generation Game). Even then he still fluffs the words. Dear, oh dear.
A large community cast of boys does something to redeem the show — their opening rendition of the hymn Praise My Soul is the highlight.
In the closing moments we have a speeded-up photographic collage of political moments since 1968. Briefly one is shown a
f r ustrating glimpse of an unrealised directorial vision — man’s delusions in the sweep of history — that could have been interesting. But it constitutes no more than a minute right at the end. Bennett’s play may once have worked, but it is now a dud. One target of his sneering is those old retired Majors who continued to flaunt their rank long after the war.
How was that any different from tired playwrights whose early work is reheated and vain old actors who should no longer be on the professional stage?
JACK WOLFE, a slip of a 21- year- old j ust out of the Mountview stage school, makes a fine professional debut playing Louis Braille in a new musical
The Braille Legacy.
The venue i s the Charing Cross theatre, until lately a bastion of stinkers. It has improved markedly under new artistic director Thom Southerland. Braille ( 1809- 1852) was the brilliant student at France’s Royal Institute for Blind Youth who perfected an alphabet of raised letters allowing unsighted people to read. Mr Wolfe, who has a lovely clear tenor, makes Louis an intense flower, delicate and determined.
LOUIS must overcome scepticism and downright hostility from the 19thcentury French Assembly, which felt blind people were not worth educating.
That part of the story is seriously under-exploited. You will not often hear a critic complain about a musical being too short, but at just two hours, this one could use 15 more minutes.
Writer Sebastien Lancrenon is formulaic but Jean-Baptiste Saudray’s music i s easy on the ear.
Jerome Pradon is a reassuring presence as the institute’s kindly director, Ceili O’Connor warbles agreeably as his matron and a flattish Michael Remick — who looks disconcertingly like Max Mosley — plays a brisk military man whose rudimentary codes gave Braille his idea.
An informative, pleasant affair, with a debut from a youngster possibly bound for great things.