Andrew Haydon
posted 21 July 2006

In the wry, cod-academic programme notes for 'Nothing On', the play-within-the-play at the centre of Noises Off, Michael Frayn's imaginary professor argues for the seriousness of farce's tragic centre in a bid to secure Arts Council funding. Twenty years on, in these ever more serious days of 'social inclusion' policies, 'accessibility' and fetishised 'relevance', it feels like a political protest to sit in a small West End theatre watching a farce from 1942, staged in the intended period setting and costume.

From the moment two theatre attendants step onto the stage to deliver the now traditional 'please turn your mobile phones off' message, dressed in World War II uniforms with the requisite stiff-upper-lip accents, signing off, 'Chins up, and we'll all get through it,' one is enveloped in the comforting sepia-tinged nostalgia for the very British kind of war effort of which this play was originally a part.

It is from this feeling that Douglas Hodge's new production of See How They Run draws its power. Farce is supposed to be slightly risqué - a bit of an elicit thrill - but, in these days of wall-to-wall naked celebs and nightly soft-porn reality TV shows, the initial naughtinesses of the farce - characters running around in comparatively tame states of undress - have lost that subversive edge. This production replaces that frisson with the feeling that we're all being a bit naughty by indulging in something so frivolous as watching an unashamedly silly, pro-British romp which would have the powers that be in the Arts Council fainting in the face of its non-PC, educationally unenlightening, non-diverse agenda. The outside of the Duchess Theatre is hung with union flag bunting and the box office protected by sandbags; as if expecting an air raid ordered by Tessa Jowell. And it all works brilliantly. Reading the dispatches from the play's press night was not dissimilar to reading excitable accounts of a school's end of term treat from a class of boys much relieved that lessons were finally over and the holidays had finally begun.

See How They Run is not a technically brilliant play, but it is a terrific amount of fun. The basic set-up: Lionel Toop, the vicar of Merton-cum-Middlewick has married an actress, the niece of the Bishop of Lax, who has upset Miss Skillon, the teetotal village gossip, who objects to the vicar's wife being seen wearing trousers, and waving to soldiers. Toop is called away for the evening. The Bishop is visiting tomorrow, and the Harvest service is being taken by a locum vicar called Humphrey. Shortly after Rev. Toop's departure, Clive Winton - a longstanding actor friend of Mrs Toop - arrives, having been given a day off from his new job in the army guarding a prisoner-of-war camp down the road, from which a German airman has just escaped.

Mrs Toop hits upon the idea that in order to see a production of Private Lives which is playing in the nearby town, he should disguise himself in one of her husband's spare suits. (The play holds fond memories for the pair, who toured with it for 43 weeks around the regions, but Lance Corporal Winton is barred from visiting the town by army regulations.) The reunited thesps immediately fall to fondly re-rehearsing their fight scene from the end of act two of Private Lives; Miss Skillon re-enters, and is knocked unconscious. End of act one.

From here the mechanics of farce take hold and while trying to revive Miss Skillon with greater and greater quantities of brandy, more and more vicars, or men dressed as vicars, gradually enter the fray, until the stage is awash with putative clerics, madly chasing one another around the living room of the vicarage, while the drunken spinster lies downstage in an alcoholic stupor.

The play relies heavily on this sort of madcap energy at least as much as on the verbal humour - much of which, being topical gags about rationing, the scarcity of petrol, brandy and clothing, now sound like quaint historical footnotes more than actual humour. Farce requires an absolute precision of timing, and on the night I saw the play, the timing wasn't quite there - but in these temperatures, everyone is entitled to an off-night. Watching the actors required to don ever more layers - the crucial vicar costume consists of a vest, shirt, dog-collar bib, waistcoat, jacket and occasionally a hat and coat - one felt tempted to call a human rights organisation to intervene.

Nancy Carroll, as the embattled vicar's wife, exudes a rare level of charm, alongside the requisite levels of energy and comic timing. Around her, Tim Pigott-Smith battles gamely on, looking like he's having a great deal of fun in the process, as the Bishop, while the rotund Nicholas Blaine is excellent as the late-arriving Rev. Humphrey, whose increasing perplexity at each unexpected development, and determination to join in so as to avoid causing a fuss, leads to a point where he pretends to drink successive invisible brandies in order to please his hostess. Nicholas Rowe and Jo Stone-Fewings are both charming as the Rev. Toop and his wife's actor friend respectively.

See How They Run delivers two hours of blissfully uncomplicated silliness, which allows you to switch off from the real world, and in this director Douglas Hodge has faithfully recreated the play's original purpose with no small amount of brio, and made a stronger case for its revival than any amount of worthy funding applications will ever achieve.

Till 28 October 2006.