When the understudy steals the show
Me and My Girl
Chichester Festival Theatre
★★★★★
The sudden replacement of a star with its understudy elicits mixed feelings. There is a palpable sense of disappointment from members of the audience who have parted with their hard-earned cash to see a marquee name; but there is also a heap of goodwill from those who hope the unknown – who has been thrown into the spotlight at the 11th hour – will make it to the final curtain.
All of which was very much the case in Daniel Evans’s spirited new production of this old Thirties warhorse, known for such knees-up pleasers as The Lambeth Walk and The
Sun Has Got His Hat On. Leading man Matt Lucas had, on doctor’s orders, been told to rest his voice and so Ryan Pidgen (cast in the minor role of the chef) stepped into the breach, his breezy professionalism ensuring that the audience were eating out of his hand from start to finish.
The role of cocker-née geezer Bill Snibson who, in an unlikely twist of fate, becomes heir to the ancient seat of Hereford, is one that requires the actor to switch from rough-hewn wideboy to imperious landowner as he is tutored in the ways of speaking proper. You can imagine it would have suited Lucas’s verbal dexterity, but Pidgen does it nimbly, too – hoofing, goofing and strutting The Lambeth Walk to perfection. He even manages to raise a laugh from the intentionally awful howlers. “Aperitif?” asks a sonorous butler. “No fanks,” says Snibson, pointing to his gnashers. “I got me own.”
In truth, Me and My Girl is a work that gets by on easy charm, and I imagine this was the secret of the show’s initial success and its staggering Eighties revival (when it was given a fresh lick by Stephen Fry’s revisions), which made a star of Emma Thompson (as Snibson’s guileless intended, Sally) and won 11 Tony nominations on its Broadway transfer. It’s slight, with considerable longueurs and at least half a dozen unmemorable tunes. Evans doesn’t quite solve these problems, but paints over the cracks spectacularly.
There’s a wonderful sheen to the song-and-dance numbers (cleverly protracted and imaginatively choreographed by Alistair David), The
Sun Has Got His Hat On boasting an infectious bossa nova interlude with the chorus gamely leaping about the stage. Meanwhile, Lez Brotherston’s design maintains a sense of tradition in the most imaginative way possible – a cyclorama of old London Town in miniature; a magnificent 2D-model of the stately home which, clearly, has been modelled on Highclere Castle, the filming location of Downton Abbey.
It is not only Pidgen who takes flight. Caroline Quentin is commanding as the Duchess who must do a Pygmalion on Snibson and whose Lady Bracknell pronouncements (“Love is for the middle classes”) mask an innate sense of fun. Meanwhile, the ever-fabulous Clive Rowe does a rather moving transition from silly old sod to tender war hero who has been holding a candle for her ladyship for 30 years.
Even if Me and My Girl is as subtle as a parade of pearly kings and queens singing Abba songs, Evans does manage to elicit some depth, and there’s a certain us-and-them resonance as the genteel Hampshire relatives slowly come round to the parvenu who has transformed their lives.
This is soft-hearted knockabout stuff and Evans knows the limitations of his material. But, boy, it’s fun – a cheeky tonic for troubled times.