New writing is always difficult to review, especially when that new writing has been commissioned specially, as it was this evening by the Lyceum Theatre Company to perform as part of their 90th season celebrations. Written by local playwright and certainly no stranger to the Lyceum, Colin Smith, Play (for that is the play's title) is like nothing else I have ever witnessed.
The premise for this play is fairly simple, but highly illogical and simply would never happen. It is the opening night of a new play, 'A Wing And A Prayer' by a local playwright, Brian Simpson. So far so good. However, where this falls apart is that the script seems to have gone missing, perhaps even stolen, and so the play cannot go on. Surely if it is opening night then a script is somewhat unnecessary since the cast are already 'off book' and the crew will have their cues pre-programmed, and so there may well be a few hiccoughs along the way, but the script is not completely necessary and the play could still have been performed. That notwithstanding, and let us assume for a moment that the play cannot go ahead.... and what happens next is not only bizarre but takes some swallowing.
Half the stage is set as Brian Simpson's living room [exceptionally well decorated by the set design and props team], and the other half is left as a blank canvas and is transformed into whatever setting Brian's meandering and chaotic mind takes us, as he desperately searches for a play, a plot, characters, and a way out. We find ourselves in Mexico, Camelot, and Pantoland... oh yes we do! The 'plot' of this 'imrpovised' play is that another jealous writer called Frank Eccles has stolen the play, changed some of the dialogue altering it to make it out-of-context or bizarre, and then headed off to Camelot and set himself up as King Arthur. A policeman sounding like Bernard Bresslaw and looking like Hercule Poirot enters the narrative as do a couple of American gangsters looking more like The Blues Brothers than the Blues Brothers but behaving like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and that's all before we go to Pantoland where there is a large goose wandering the stage toting a machine gun for no apparent reason and a very insistent if not persistent Dame and an elderly man dressed as a fairy! All through the play we have Brian Simpson's wife and his mother-in-law in tow, both acting slightly bemused but not overly concerned that they find themsleves on a stage in front of a live audience with the cast constantly breaking the fourth wall talking to us and interacting with us. Oh and did I mention the Stage Manager who comes on stage frequently to try and get Simpson to decide on and stick to an interesting storyline...
The play does take a long time to warm up, but once it does there are some very funny lines and circumstances in the play, which I laughed loudly at. There are also a few very 'Lyceum-specific' jokes such as not doing panto or Shakespeare, which only Lyceum regulars will understand. But basically it is a very confusing and incoherent play and despite the fun element, left me feeling unsated by the experience. My overall feeling is that Smith has simply had lots of ideas for comedy plays but hasn't been able to write a complete play and so instead has cobbled a lot of stuff together and called it 'Play'. I heard someone this evening describe it as 'Pythonesque', but sadly have to take them to task on this since I am a huge Monty Python fan, and although, I grant you, Smith may owe a debt to Python, this is far from their humour and elan. I assume they were referring to the final scenes which were set in Camelot and were comparing this with 'Holy Grail' but still, there is simply no comparison.
Colin Smith played the troubled playwright with a wandering mind, Brian Simposn, himself, and his accepting and a little confused wife was played with sincerity by Liz Travis. In fact the casting of the play was as near perfect as you could have got, and they all worked excellently together, seemingly understanding the play far more than the audience did. Full credit must go to Mike Lawlor for his wonderful panto dame Widow Twankey - I have no idea if he has ever played a dame before, but if not, then he can now be assured of never needing to look for work over the panto season! My favourite characterisations though this evening came from John Cockroft as the police inspector Digby and Peter Dignan as the more dim-witted of the two thugs Mikey; who corpsed a couple of times when faced with Lawlor's ad-libbing. This was the funniest part of the evening, and perhaps the only part that was truly improvised.
It was a large cast, and a very difficult play to pull off. The entire cast should be congratulated heartily as they made this nonsense watchable and entertaining. The play was too long and lacked pace though. Shave a good 20 minutes from the play and make it more pacey, then it would be more watchable. There is only so long one can suspend one's suspension of disbelief!
Verdict: An enjoyable pot-pourri of little comedy sketches in a somewhat perplexing fantasy narrative, convincingly acted providing the audience with plenty of laughs but little substance.
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 6/4/19
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