The Ladykillers

A proper reviewer of The Ladykillers would feel obliged to ruminate knowledgeably about the aesthetic compromises involved in adapting a classic film comedy for the stage. A proper reviewer would understand the full story of how the screenplay came to be written and be able to reel off the entire cast list and a batch of other relevant facts about the original film. A proper reviewer, after considering the many positive aspects of the stage adaptation would, in the interests of balance and the furtherance of enlightened thinking, give us the benefit of his insight (or her insight, sorry Lyn Gardner) into the inevitable negatives. A proper reviewer would not spout mere opinion but deliver the distillation of fully researched, finely honed, critical judgment.

But then proper reviewers have trained minds. Their heads are well stocked with historical references and anecdote, and equipped with almost photographically accurate memories. Their brains are like vast dramatic databases.

Mine ain’t. For me whatever I may have seen in the past is all a blur – I can’t remember the film I saw last week never mind one I haven’t seen in decades – and the present … well, after half an hour in the bar at the Grand Theatre, the present is a bit fuzzy too. And that’s just the way I like it. And I go along to the theatre because I think I may have a good time. I don’t want to have to think about it too much.

That’s why I went to see the Graham Linehan adaptation of the Ladykillers the other day. I loved it. It didn’t make a damned bit of difference to me that the only bit of the original film I can remember is the scene where Frankie Howerd threw an apple at a cart horse then thumped Kenneth Connor on the nose. And that bit didn’t even appear in the stage play. Which is a pity. I bet The Grand has never had a cart horse on stage, and I think they missed a trick there. No matter. There are plenty of great jokes to keep you laughing along, as you’d expect from the writer of Father Ted and the IT Crowd.

My favourite was the moment the professor, asked why he is crammed in a tiny cupboard with his four companions in crime (a brilliant visual gag in itself) explains, “We are artists!” And he goes on, turning archly to the audience, “Being fooled by art is one of the primary pleasures afforded to the middle classes”. The culture loving middle classes love chuckling about their own foibles and pretentions and the joke got one of the biggest laughs of the evening.

Oddly the biggest laugh arose from an extended joke about the exact time the English expect tea. Hard to explain why it was so funny but it was.

Even the set is a kind of extended joke, lopsidedly ramshackle and prone to the jitters and table balletics every time a train passes by. I’ve not laughed so much at inanimate objects since a chair leg broke under me at Bettakultcha in the Corn Exchange and I spilled a whole glass of wine on my teetotal friend in the row behind.

For people who like watching famous people there are a couple of actors that even I recognise from the telly. And they are funny too.

All in all The Ladykillers is a genuinely great night out. Even some of the proper reviewers were laughing along, and you can’t say fairer than that.

The Ladykillers is at Leeds Grand Theatre until 6th April 2013 and tickets are available, so I’d go buy one if I were you.