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A
Right Royal Farce |
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Emily
Hill | |
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On the front window of the King's Head, Islington there is a solitary laminate notice, which looks rather lonely alongside the riotous promotional posters billing the walls. A reviewer called Peter Gruner (publication undisclosed) has written a favourable review of A Right Royal Farce, which describes the play as a fine exercise in knockabout humour, with 'lots of lovely royal jokes'. Which is like saying the panto in your local village hall has 'lots of lovely people wearing tan tights and orange face paint': quite true, but not at all a rational basis upon which to fork out 25 quid and sit about for two hours straining to enjoy yourself. The plot is too ludicrous to rehearse in any detail. It centres on Prince Harry's attempts to be crowned King on the death of Queen Elizabeth. Various attempts have been made in the national press to describe the actions, far too many dignifying it with allusions to a pseudo Shakespearean mashing up of Harry's Richard III, Prince Charles's Othello, with William's Prince of Denmark. But this is all tosh: a mere scaffolding constructed by writers Toby Young and Lloyd Evans, on which to pin all the lovely royal jokes, of which there are, as promised, lots. Lovely or otherwise, they are not original: Prince Phillip shouts at foreign dignitaries to get back to 'Bongo Bongo land', Prince Charles is told to 'bugger off to Balmoral to talk to your tomatoes', Camilla wears jodhpurs and brays like a horse. Every dead corpse in twenty years of the great British royal joke is warmed over and squelched to the delight of certain geriatric members of the audience seated along the back row. It's a shame really because some of the actors are quite good, and in their final bow the older members of the cast had the communal glint of silent desperation playing about their moist eyes. Two of them have spent a large portion of the play running about the stage sporting Dickensian nightcaps, with long poles levitating about grotesquely in the front of their striped nightgowns. Another joke always good for a laugh in the Evans/Young repertoire is the erection joke. Camilla is quite amusing, played as she is by the blonde from the Philadelphia advert, as an awkward, bored sex addict with a lethargic booming voice - much like Lauren Bacall with oral thrush. James Hewitt isn't in the slightest bit amusing, but the Herculean efforts of the actor who plays him are worth a mention because he sustains a quite remarkable impersonation of Rik Mayall for over an hour, and his sheer determination to wheedle out a laugh as he lurches across the stage with priapic glee are almost worth a sympathy giggle. Also of note is the avant-garde interval performance of the actress who plays the maid, who pretends to clean the stage for 15 minutes, and cadged a fag off the front row. Ultimately, the whole performance has the inimitable air of the village hall panto. It isn't very funny, it isn't very good, but there is a certain swagger and bravado from the performers, which leads one to think it isn't their fault. It is just the script, which is unremittingly bad. You may wander in (as I did) noting the white laminate sign, preparing to laugh and thinking all the theatre hacks sent to review A Right Royal Farce must have been the most dreadful miserablists, impervious to the peculiar charms of the 'lovely royal joke.' You leave nurturing the conviction that the late Auberon Waugh was right, and Toby Young really ought to give up writing altogether and retrain as a dentist. He could give infinitely more pleasure extracting teeth. Till 28 August 2006.
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