He’s Goon but not forgotten... though we could have done with a spikier Spike
Spike
The Watermill Theatre, Newbury
Until Mar 5, 2hrs 10mins
A Number
The Old Vic
Until Mar 19, 1hr 5mins
Spike Milligan was a oneman riot. He famously called his great fan, Prince Charles, a ‘little grovelling bastard’ on live TV and later faxed him: ‘I suppose a knighthood is out of the question.’
The mad, anarchic Spike, writer of the 1950s Goon Show, is celebrated in a new play by Private Eye editor Ian Hislop and Nick Newman.
It’s set (mostly) in a BBC studio, with the shell-shocked young war veteran Milligan moodily played by hangdog John Dagleish, who has the depressed demeanour of Tony Hancock and the bulging eyes of Marty Feldman. Jeremy Lloyd gives the portly Harry Secombe a beery Welsh lilt and that famous, explosive giggle; George Kemp is a slightly sinister and smug
Peter Sellers – the legendary voice of, among others, Bluebottle in The Goons.
Milligan’s fragile mental health isn’t helped by the relentless pressure he was put under to deliver the scripts. June, his wife (Ellie Morris), takes the brunt.
Older fans will love the cheapo radiophonic sound effects – introduced by the splendid Janet (Margaret Cabourn-Smith) – and the live snatches of Goonery are monitored by a preposterous pinstriped guardian of BBC decency (Robert Mountford).
Perfectly enjoyable but overly cosy. Of Spike’s anarchic genius as a performer of goofy originality there’s not quite enough. Spike could do with being, well, spikier.
Caryl Churchill’s playlet, A Number, originally starred Michael Gambon and Daniel Craig. It seemed then a weird masterpiece about human cloning in the wake of Dolly the cloned sheep.
Just two years after Roger
Allam starred in it, it returns to London with Paapa Essiedu and Lennie James.
It now feels a bit of a grind.
The father (James) is visited by multiple versions of the same adult son – all of them played by Essiedu in a one-man variety act of paternal confrontation.
Lyndsey Turner directs it with migraine-inducing lighting on a set of hideous puce. There’s now a cold, experimental feel to a play that’s been revisited
too soon.