Jack Absolute Flies Again: Knockout Comedy movie review by Richard Bean

No one saw him coming. A reworking of Goldoni’s 18th-century comedy “A Servant of Two Masters” doesn’t sound like a recipe for a transatlantic comic smash, but that was before Richard Bean turned it into a thriller, “One Man, Two Guvnors.” Now teaming up with co-writer Oliver Criss (who played the wrecked but mysterious Sid James Corden in the previous hit), Penn is back again with another revamp of an old play and the National Theater in London has high hopes. Shock news: Comedy lighting hits twice. As the extreme Britons of the 1940s, seeing in the comic plot, say, “Hurray!”

Those hopes have been so high since Ben and Chris telecast Sheridan’s 1775 comedy The Rivals among a group of fighter pilots during World War II. They have set up camp on the sunlit lawns (via Mark Thompson’s collection of nostalgic picture books) at Malaprop Hall, a stately heap that was commissioned by the Royal Air Force and yet still overlooked by its owner.

Capturing the comedic idea of ​​the restoration of addressing and engaging with a live audience throughout, Ms. Malaprop, legendary and pioneering Sheridan language legend, opens up the proceedings with “a flawless electrocution.” Watching the audience, Caroline Quentin noted, “Imelda Staunton was unavailable. Mrs. Helen Mirren told the cast that she would decide when she would grow up, thank you very much.”

As in the original, she is the guardian of Lydia Langesh (the sharp and complacent Natalie Simpson) who, to save time explaining the crazy and stealthy plot, is basically loved by every young man with a pulse (hence the title) but has plenty of ideas of her own. . “Beefcake,” she screams, clapping her eye at RAF working-class Dudley Scunthorpe (Kelvin Fletcher). “My favorite kind of cake.”

In Sheridan’s original, Lydia is obsessed with romance stories. Here she is not only the first female officer, the airlift assistant, she’s a staunch enthusiast of the new feminism that arose out of women’s liberation in wartime. So far, so true, except for the ruthlessly exploited fact that Lydia’s devotion to emancipation does not meet her own needs. Equality can stop when she wants her maid, Lucy, to make ends meet.

As for Lydia’s faux-feminist with her heavily arched eyebrow, beady-eyed Keri Howard (as Lucy) keeps the audience poised with many downsides about the state of things, not the least of which is the plot: love, and all the bleeding maid does is oil on poignant plot. to deliver messages of love to the wrong people.” She does just that, putting on the train a turbulent array of misunderstandings, mainly but not exclusively amid beautifully played pilots starting with Virgins, and Lovelorn Faulkland (Jordan Metcalfe, with legs like a linguine). Wet) to Australian pilot James Corrigan’s stunning Bob “Wingnut” acre.

Laurie Davidson leads them in the title role in the strikingly emphatic National Theater debut. Going from enthusiastic self-confidence to despair with wide eyes, he’s exhilaratingly alive to rapid mood swings and the feeling of rocketing excitement is simply contagious.

As his stakes rise, so does the already high level of laughter-backed irony line-by-line and fierce comedy good timing for the entire company, not least Quentin’s piling role with ever-increasing levels of ridiculously silly misbehavior. (Admiring her garden, she confuses jasmine with her clitoris.) Then there’s Peter Forbes stuffed into a cool shirt–“Shut up! I’m screaming!”–and Major General Sir Anthony Absolute, who observed the award judges, also did the astonishing trick of being utterly furious and perfect while being honest. amazing.

Bringing the play to the Battle of Britain is not a random choice. Being a young pilot at the time was a matter of life and death, and facing impending death daily meant much less time for courtship. The rising stakes are perfect for comedy. Even better, the show doesn’t falter from the bottom of tragedy with a couple of sprawling gritty videos that combine the ruthless over-the-top oddities of it all with its often deadly consequences.

All of this, not to mention composer Paul Englishby’s Jitterbug number, intertwined immaculately in director Emily Burns’ perfectly tuned and perfectly calibrated production. Her presence in Olivier’s gigantic, hard-to-manage space, and that she’s also her first National Theatre, makes her all the more impressive.

The show can’t deliver the same level of pure hysteria as “One Man, Two Guvnors,” not least because the plot doesn’t revolve around one knockout role. Instead, the authors generously added to the delight by disseminating the comedic gifts more widely. They too, as their unexpected ending poignantly shows, gave the production what “One Man, Two Guvnors” couldn’t achieve: the true heart.

Like most theaters recovering from COVID, National was in dire need of a knockout. They now have one.



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