Rich Jevons reviews One Man, Two Guvnors at Bradford’s Alhambra …
One lovely touch for the Alhambra performance of One Man Two Guvnors is that you are greeted by The Craze, a four-piece skiffle band dressed in dapper tight-fitting purple suits, as you enter the auditorium. They play upbeat (or should that be backbeat?) original music and songs by Grant Olding and also perform during scene changes and the interval, and really set the early 60s scene well.
One Man Two Guvnors plot is a tad over-complex for a comedy but this simply adds to the chaotic but constant stream of gags that are rib-ticklers, building up to a fair few belly-wobblers.
Suffice it to say that buffoon Charlie The Duck Clench (played superbly by Shaun Williamson) is marrying off his air-brained daughter Pauline (pulled off well by Jasmyn Banks) to wannabe thespian Alan Dangle (portrayed with the emphasis on the player’s pretentiousness by Edward Hancock).
There is some Shakespearean cross-dressing with Rachel Crabbe (Alicia Davies) impersonating her belated gangster twin brother. But, of course, it is Francis Henshall (Gavin Spokes in the role originally immortalised by James Corden) who carries the show as a servant with two masters.
Francis has to keep his two guvnors, Rachel and her secret sweetheart Stanley Stubbers (the irrepressible Patrick Warner), apart and unaware of each other. So the whole thing ends up as a farce that is a combination of Fawlty Towers, Benny Hill and Carry On with its titillating sexual innuendoes (mainly saucily cheeky rather than downright dirty) and slapstick mayhem.
My personal favourite visual gags are in the simply wonderful and quite enervating (for audience and actors) meal scene where two waiters (one a geriatric with a pacemaker) assist Francis in serving up dishes for his two guvnors. The madcap humour climaxes in a piece of audience participation that I can’t explain without spoiling (whoops, sorry!)
Gavin Spokes really works the audience brilliantly with some great improvised banter and even greater set pieces.
But this is essentially an ensemble performance that comes in up to the mark you expect from a touring West End production. And the real beauty of the show is that the odd gaff that would be the kiss of death in a serious play can be incorporated, indeed embraced, to actually add another level to gratuitously silly entertainment
.
So, let’s face it, you won’t get much intellectual stimulation from this show (come back to the Alhambra for Lord of the Flies later in the year for that) but if it’s a lol for your Facebook friends you’re looking for, then a lmao or or even lmfao is absolutely guaranteed (look it up, FB virgins!).
As seen at the Alhambra Theatre, Bradford, 21 July 2014 where it continues until 26 July 2014 and then tours into March 2015.
Watch the trailer here:
