DRAMA AT LARGE: Una plays for laughs in comedy double bill at Chichester Festival Theatre
Dunstable-raised actress in Sheridan and Stoppard satires.
DUNSTABLE raised actress Una Stubbs is at her barmy best in two short comedies that have been revived at Chichester Festival Theatre.
The star's comedy pedigree is put to good use in two plays within plays that lampoon those appointed arbiters of taste and quality – the theatre critics.
It's a brave director who willingly takes a pop at critics and even bolder of writers to vent their collective spleens on the sometimes powerful and always influential journalists who could make or break their productions.
But that didn't stop theatre owner and playwright Richard Sheridan in the 18th century and it didn't halt Tom Stoppard – thank god.
There are times when critics need to be taken down a peg before they self combust in an explosion of self important flatulence.
The healthy dose of satire that is served up in The Real Inspector Hound and The Critic is just what they need to remind them of their place and worth in theatre.
Stoppard, a former journalist, knows his subject well. Hound features two clichd national critics who are seated in the theatre audience to review a country house whodunit starring, among others, Stubbs as Mrs Drudge the cleaner.
It's hard not to titter as her Mrs Mop impression makes a clean sweep of the vintage comedy dialogue.
It's surreal for me. To my right I have a flank of real national journos and to my left Nicholas Le Prevost and Richard McCabe, dressed in sympathy, as fictional critics Birdboot and Moon (very Dickensian).
If ever art imitated life then this was it – right down to the crumpled, unstructured, cream linen suits that have become a shabby uniform for the male arts crowd.
The seedy-looking Moon (McCabe) gushes with a lexicon of verbiage, his greasy hair and thick-rimmed glasses give him the credentials of a man who cares more for language and the insular world of theatre rather than fashion.
He's an inspiration complete with hunched back and clumsy walk (from too many years squeezed into the stalls me thinks) but eminently watchable in McCabe's clever hands.
His colleague is more popular tabloid who uses his mature good looks and simpering style to further his knowledge of theatre with a few backstage one-to-ones with the leading ladies.
The play they, and we, are watching is a parody of the classic crime thriller complete with a corpse or two and some hilarious performances from a masterfully funny cast.
Joe Dixon as moustachioed and debonair lover Simon steals the show as he saunters about between his two lovers Felicity (the spiffing Sophie Bould) and her glamorous mother Cynthia (Hermione Gulliford).
It raises the question how much influence critics have over each production. Will the dramatist take delight in exacting the ultimate revenge on the literary jackals?
The Critic is a Restoration farce that drags on a bit before delivering a simply over-the-top denouement that has everyone in convulsions.
Again critics are satirised mercilessly by a writer with venom in his quill.
PR guru Puff (a poodle-permed dandy of a performance from the splendid McCabe) is a poacher turned gamekeeper who thinks he has written a stonking great play.
He asks his two friends and arch critics Sneer (Derek Griffiths) and Dangle (Le Prevost) to attend the dress rehearsal to get an advanced preview.
In a moment of reckless folly he tells his cast that they can edit out any parts of the play that they don't like (this could be an interesting trend) which turns a tragedy about the Spanish Armada into a free-for-all costume romp.
It ends in chaos but not before we have a parade of stunning and outlandish costumes (including a bare-bummed Britannia playfully performed by joint director and actor Sean Foley), a stab at swordplay, and some larger than life performances that make this a double comic event of the summer and another success for the theatre's artistic director Jonathan Church.
Running on selective dates until August 28. For tickets call the box office 01243 781312.
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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