It’s delirious fun from Branagh and Brydon
Theatre
The Painkiller
Garrick
What with the buttocks of Tom Hiddleston and the torsos of Aidan Turner and James Norton et al, the sight of male flesh is almost a nightly formality on TV these days. Well, it may not have the ladies swooning but it will certainly get the town talking.
At the Garrick, French-originated farce The Painkiller treats its audience to the double-whammy of Welsh comedy actor Rob Brydon careering about in the skimpiest briefs and his co-star Kenneth Branagh – Sir Ken – in only slightly less revealing underwear, twitching and flexing his pecs, too.
Not a feast for hunk-seeking eyes. Some people may need a stiff drink, or even smelling-salts, after witnessing Brydon present a view of his rear so indecent it would even lower the tone at the Cheltenham races, though Branagh, at 55, can take pride in his remarkably toned appearance. But it’s all in the cause of comic high jinks.
Branagh plays Ralph, a hit-man whose life depends on carrying out a gangland assassination. Brydon is Dudley, a suicidal photographer from Swindon who will not accept that his wife has left him for her psychiatrist.
They are booked into adjacent rooms at a boutique hotel (overlooking the court house where the bullets must fly) with a connecting door.
The co-ordinates are set for mayhem after Ralph is tasked by the fretful hotel porter with keeping a protective eye on the desperate divorcee. The latter recovers his will to live (at least long enough to confront his ex) and sends the stone-hearted Samaritan out of his wits.
Unable to track down the original 1969 play ( Le Contrat) by veteran farceur Francis Veber, I cannot say how much adaptor Sean Foley, who also directs, has changed the text. But in 90 delirious minutes, there is not an opportunity for a gag that is passed up.
The two stars, who did an early run of this show in Belfast four years ago, are in their element. Brydon shifts from hangdog melodramatics to the sort of puppyish cheeriness that would send anyone up the wall. Branagh uses his tense, coiled energy to suggest a man who keeps reaching the end of his tether and yet has to claw back some semblance of composure.
The sight of the pair attempting to shuffle-jump up small flights of steps with their trousers round their ankles is a joy. Amid the horse-play, which extends to compromising positions in bed that are as humiliating as they are contrived, the piece sounds salutary notes about isolationist male uptightness and the need to let go. Further accelerating the madness are Mark Hadfield, who gives a supporting tour de force as the mincing, interfering and bewildered porter, while Alex MacQueen shines as Dudley’s loathed rival Dent. Until April 30. Tickets: 0844 482 9673; branaghtheatre.com
‘Rob Brydon presents a view of his rear so indecent it would even lower the tone at Cheltenham’