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Black comedy packed with laughs
The music killers: Prof Marcus (Paul Bown) conducts the world's most talentless string quartet for Mrs Wilberforce's ladies in Michael Taylor's glorious set The Ladykillers Wolverhampton Grand **** By Roger Clarke IT is a remarkable 58 years since
Professor Marcus, played then by a then unknighted Alec Guiness, led his
oddball collection of misfits through the doors of Ealing Studios and
into the home of dotty old biddy Mrs Wilberforce. The film, with a screenplay by William Rose,
features high up on any list of best comedies of all time and this
stage adaptation by Graham Linehan has lost little of the lunacy and
plain old fashioned daftness of the original. It really is laugh a
minute stuff. The whole thing is helped by a marvellous set
from Michael Taylor which has a look of a Blackpool Pleasure Beach
Haunted House circa 1950 about it with nothing level and no right
angles. It cleverly transforms to rooftops, complete with smoking
chimneys, a railway tunnel and a street scene – where we even have an
armed robbery acted out with tiny, remote controlled cars and police
cars on the walls of Mrs Wilberforce's rundown, Victorian pile where p It all helps director Sean Foley keep up a
cracking pace which is an essential in this kind of comedy. The story is simple. Mrs Wilberforce, played with much padding, fun and charm by Michele Dotrice, is no longer all there, reports aliens, fugitive Nazi leaders disguised as newsagents and the like to the police, in the shape of Constable MacDonald, played by Marcus Taylor, and lives alone with her parrot General Gordon. Entering her life comes the Prof, played with
panache by Paul Bown, who answers her ad for rooms to let, who brings
with him his gang disguised as a string quartet practising for a
concert. There is Major Courtney, played by Clive Mantle, who has a penchant for dressing up in women's clothes and panics to the verge of nervous breakdown at almost any question. Michele Dotrice as Mrs Wilberforce listens as Paul Bown as Professor Marcus spins her yet another far fetched yarn. Picture: Dan Tsantilis. Then there is One Round, who is Mr Lawson in the quartet – “Is that me?” – played by Chris McCalphy. One Round was never one of nature's gifted and
add punch drunk to that – which gives you an idea of where One Round
came from – and becoming a competitor on Mastermind is not really
an option. He takes stupidity to new levels, taking it to an art form. That pair are almost normal though to Continental
psychopath Louis who wears a knife as other men might wear a ring – in
his hand all the time – played, with menaces, by Cliff Parisi and
finally Harry who takes red pills to calm him down, blue pills to
counter the red and then yellow pills to counter the blue. Harry, played
by William Troughton is either cleaning or twitching – when he is not
being attacked by inanimate objects. He must be well and truly cream
crackered at the end of every show! The gang manage to pull off their daring robbery
and use Mrs Wilberforce to get the money back to the house but when she
finds out she demands that they give themselves up to the police – which
is not really a viable option among the criminal classes so they set out
to dispose of her . . . with mixed results. Let us say she is the only
one around for a curtain call at the end. The script ranges from witty to downright daft
but is always gloriously funny with shades of The 39 Steps, Bottom and
The Young Ones at times. For music lovers there is a concert of
experimental music – i.e. none of the musicians can actually play – for
Mrs Wilberforce's friends to enjoy. Some of the story is a little dated; these days
armed robbers would be looking for a lot more than £200,000 from a five
man heist, while when was the last time anyone saw a friendly
neighbourhood copper on the beat? But that hardly matters in an evening which provides so much fun and entertainment from such a fine cast. There is no great issue to think about, no complex plot to follow, no great dilemma to discuss on the way home, no moral questions to face or answer, you just sit back, relax enjoy and laugh – and you can't ask more of a comedy than that. To 02-02-13.
Meanwhile in the second movement . . . **** IF there was a competition to decide who
comes out top in Graham Linehan's black comedy – a superb cast or the
remarkable set – it would probably end in a draw. Michele Dotrice, famous for her role as Michael
Crawford's patient wife in the TV hit Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em, is a
delight as the sweet old lady, Louisa Wilberforce, who inadvertently
provides accommodation for a gang of crooks plotting a £200,000 heist. The crackpot crooks, led by Professor Marcus,
have the audience in stitches with their antics while posing as amateur
musicians practicing for a concert, and their eventual efforts to
silence the gentle landlady have a surprising conclusion. The set, representing Mrs Wilberforce's unstable
home, is a triumph of design. Furniture slides across the floor, lights
flicker, pictures fall from walls and steam billows indoors every time a
train to Newcastle thunders by. And the home is even able to turn inside-out to
reveal rooftop action. A model train steams into the station and a chase
involving police cars, complete with a pile-up, is cleverly created. Paul Brown impresses as Professor Marcus, the
‘gentleman' thief who masterminds the robbery, backed by his motley
collection of henchmen, none of whom seem the full shilling. Gangling Clive Mantle looks a ringer for Basil
Fawlty in his role as the batty Major Courtney, and Chris McCalphy is a
knockout playing the punch drunk ex boxer ‘One Round' who turns out to
be more warm-hearted than the rest of the five-strong gang. There's a happy ending, of sorts, as Mrs
Wilberforce turns the tables on the bungling thieves. To 02.02.13 Paul Marston
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