THEATRE REVIEW: One Man, Two Guvnors - The Octagon Theatre, Bolton.

This is the famous adaptation of Carlo Goldoni’s 1743 comedy “The Servant Of Two Masters”, which in turn is descended from commedia dell’arte improvisation. And playwright Richard Bean brings it to 1963’s Brighton. With gangsters, toffs, Laurence Olivier impersonations, ukulele-playing, and a waiter who keeps throwing himself down the stairs, last night’s performance at the Octagon Theatre, Bolton, was a colourful riot of action, slapstick, and mayhem.

In an eleven-strong cast, the two actors playing “the Guvnors” really shone. Laurie Samson was the Guvnor known as Stanley: an upper-class rogue with fond reminiscences of being tortured at boarding school, who is trying to conceal that he has just killed the other Guvnor, Roscoe. It did help Samson’s loathsomely good performance that he had all the best lines. And Siobhan Athwal matched him as the other Guvnor, Roscoe’s twin sister Rachel disguised as Roscoe, who is also in love with Stanley. Athwal switched back and forth between the ice-cold gangster Roscoe and the charming soubrette Rachel with ease.

Caught between the two was the hapless new “heavy” Henshall, played with fresh enthusiasm in all manner of dreadful scenarios by Jordan Pearson. Henshall has not eaten for a day or so, and manages to get himself employed by two Guvnors at the same time, so that he can collect two wages. This would prove tricky for a clever heavy, and Henshall is far from clever, but he does do his best.

Backing them up was an ensemble of Brighton’s finest and shadiest characters. So…… Charlie “The Duck” (played with Cockney intensity by Rodney Matthew) had arranged to marry his pretty but very dim-witted daughter Pauline (a delightful Lauren Sturgess) to Roscoe. But as Roscoe’s now dead, the engagement party’s groom is quickly swapped over to would-be actor Alan (Qasim Mahmood, seizing every insecure overacting moment going), to the delight of both Pauline and Alan’s lawyer father Harry (Karl Seth, milking every moment possible for a slimy smile.) Unfortunately, “Roscoe” then reappears.

Over at the hotel where the two Guvnors are staying, Henshall desperately has to serve up two different dinners without being caught. In this he is aided by the cook Lloyd (played with solemnly precise timing by Alexander Bean), the head waiter Gareth (a suavely cutting Matthew Ganley), and elderly waiter Alfie, who has the tremors and keeps encountering the stairwell (the master of physical comedy that is Javier Marzan.)

Really though, all Henshall wants to do is eat a big plate of fish and chips, and get Charlie’s bookkeeper Dolly over to Majorca for a leg-over holiday. Polly Lister was a blaze of charisma in this role, mixing tight skirts and lascivious comments with being the most competent person in Brighton.

Director Lotte Wakeham delivered a sound production of an updated classic farce, set in a candy-coloured seaside world where nothing goes terribly wrong really……. Just don’t sit in the front row of the audience.

Reviewer - Thalia Terpsichore
on - 31.5.22