The cast of One Man, Two Guvnors pulls out all the stops

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      By Richard Bean. Music and songs by Grant Olding. Directed by David Mackay. An Arts Club production. At the Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage on Wednesday, January 28. Continues until February 22

      Actors are magical creatures. And they get to pull out all the stops in One Man, Two Guvnors.

      Playwright Richard Bean based his script on Carlo Goldoni’s 1743 commedia dell’arte classic, The Servant of Two Masters, so it’s a giddy, physical ride, full of slapstick, improvisation, and fun with base appetites. In my favourite line, one of the characters says, “Oh, I need a clean shirt. I smell like a doctor’s finger.”

      Bean sets his story, which was first produced by Great Britain’s National Theatre in 2011, in the seaside town of Brighton, in 1963. A goofball named Francis Henshall gets himself employed, simultaneously, by two different guys. One is a gay gangster named Roscoe Crabbe and the other is a handsome, upper-class twit called Stanley Stubbers. Francis does his best to keep the two men from finding out that he’s working for both of them, but eventually discovers that Roscoe is actually Rachel, Roscoe’s twin sister, in disguise. She’s looking for the guy who murdered her brother—and who also happens to be her lover. That guy is… wait for it: Stanley Stubbers. The audience knows all of this early on. The pleasure is in watching the mess sort itself out.

      When it works, this kind of comedy is a well-orchestrated riot—precision disguised as chaos—and it’s extremely hard to pull off.

      Fortunately, director David Mackay has cast this production very, very well for the most part. Andrew McNee, who plays Francis, does all sorts of terrific shtick—in one sequence, Francis argues with himself so violently that he beats himself up—but, for me, the quintessential McNee moment comes when Francis first ventures into the audience. On opening night, he was so chock-full of wicked glee that audience members were screaming. It was as if he was going to tickle every one of us.

      Martin Happer, who plays Stubbers, the twit, is also some kind of wonderful. He gives sporty, muscular delivery to the character’s absurd lines, which include the description of despair, “I felt like a floral clock in the middle of winter.”

      Ryan Beil is hilarious as an amateur actor named Alan Dangle. So is Andrew Cownden, who plays an 87-year-old waiter who’s on his first day on the job. And, as Pauline, a thick-as-a-brick ingénue, Lauren Bowler has the good sense to deliver her lines with utter simplicity, as if she were innocently banging in nails.

      These are the juiciest characters and the best performances. Some of the work elsewhere is good, some less inspired. And Celine Stubel’s Roscoe is problematic. Stubel is using such an odd accent—it’s an apparent combination of Cockney and New Jersey that sometimes ends up sounding Welsh—that it’s hard to understand what she’s saying.

      There are disappointments elsewhere, too. On opening night, in a long sequence set in a restaurant, the pace went slack. And Amir Ofek’s set fails. Its basic colours, dusty blue and faded gold, are lifeless. Conceptually, the design feels inconsistent: the bold graphics of cricketers in the restaurant have no aesthetic equivalent anywhere else. And there’s a drawing-room set that’s as vacant as a barn.

      Still, the evening is hugely entertaining. Go early and soak up the music of the terrific skiffle band. And when Happer plays bicycle horns in one of the unabashedly entertaining musical interludes, try to disagree with me: actors are magical creatures.

      Comments

      3 Comments

      russell roberts

      Jan 29, 2015 at 8:04pm

      Colin: You obviously have no idea what a Welsh accent sounds like. Please retract that alarming statement. On behalf of all Welsh people world wide, Russell Roberts

      Martin Dunphy

      Jan 30, 2015 at 1:12am

      My favourite line was uttered by the (psychically) wounded Beil: "I'm dangerous and unpredictable, like a wasp in a shop window."
      Yes, McNeil is a force of nature in this production. I wonder if he has had much improv experience. Certainly there was homage paid to English music hall, variety theatre, and maybe even a couple of nods by McNeil to Frankie Howerd's audience-addressing style.
      Lots o' fun.

      Sandra Fowkes

      Feb 12, 2015 at 4:14pm

      This show was utterly stupid! There were no laughs in it from beginning to Intermission at which time I left....so much of the dialogue was most difficult to understand....references made to British humor were NOT funny whatsoever....all in all for the price charged ..$75 each I was most disappointed in the entire show....loving theatre and loving The Stanley will hopefully be better the next time I choose to attend...