Author: Kat Pope

As we waited for the performance to start, I brought my young son up to speed with the ‘Scramble for Africa’ and the colonization of the Congo by King Leopold II of the Belgians.

“What happened next?” he asked, and I had to tell him that I didn’t know. ‘What happened next’ had happened in my lifetime but I’d only ever read up to H.M.Stanley’s opening up of the area in Africa that was arbitrarily bordered and named Congo. I faltered. “Well, that’s what we’re here to find out,” I said, shakily. And find out we did, in the most exciting way possible.

Aimé Césaire’s play was written just five years after the assassination (some say by the CIA) of Patrice Lumumba, the first elected prime minister of the Congo, and Césaire’s burning anger towards such recent events shines through.

It’s 1955 in Leopoldville, and Lumumba (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is selling beer (Polar Beer, “the beer of the unified Congo”).

Already we see conflict between the tribes in the area: one half swearing by one sort of beer; the other, another. The play sets its stall out early. This area now called Congo was never a unified country, it says. Even before the Belgians came, arbitrarily drew a border, and called it ‘their’ Congo, there was in-fighting between tribes. In a way, Césaire is saying that Lumumba as tribal peacemaker, as unifier, as saviour, was doomed to failure. It’s a startling way to begin a play: setting your hero up for a fall from the very off. But Césaire is dealing with real life. And fall Lumumba did.

But first he had to rise, and the first half of this irresistible play deals with his irresistible rise to power after Congolese independence was unexpectedly granted in 1960 and Lumumba was declared the country’s first prime minister in the first democratic elections held in this commodity-rich country.

Through a nightclub tableau, director Joe Wright (Atonement and Anna Karenina on film) shows us the changes in the country as it swiftly transforms from old/traditional to modern/sexy. This enables much dancing, singing and colour to flood the stage while half the audience look on from their makeshift tables and chairs positioned in a sunken semicircle between the actors (who sometimes drop down amongst them) and the normal seats.

The atmosphere is casual – happy, but charged. And sure enough violence erupts pretty soon and Lumumba is arrested and thrown in jail. It’s a rollercoaster of a ride from there, swooping through 1960 and into 1961 as the fastest decolonialization process in Africa begins and this kaleidoscopic ride is rendered in such a lively and immersive way by Wright that you feel part of the show yourself, even when (like we were) you’re sitting in the back row.

The narrative voice threaded through the piece is a native Congolese shamanic figure (Kabongo Tshisensa), an old man who plays the likembe and speaks prophesies in his native language that are then translated by whichever actor he’s nearest. A figure from Congo’s past intruding on Congo’s future and not liking what he sees one bit, he acts as the voice of continuity and sanity. He’s an interesting device but the pace of the piece is so fast that his profound-sounding utterances get lost as we’re given no time to digest them before another piece of fantastic theatre is thrown our way.

Filling the stage with joy, happiness, and later – in a red-drenched stuttering staccato dance – pain, choreographer and co-director Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui captures the complex nature of both the country and the story perfectly. Large puppet heads are used on the upper part of the set to represent the white colonial forces playing out their power games in doggerel verse (“God gave us Congo – it’s a sin to let it go”), while puppet vultures pick over bones on stage. White people are represented throughout with varying sizes of prosthetic white noses which gives an absurdist feel to the piece and which enhances the feeling of cruelty being ever-present.

Lumumba, an increasingly desperate, impassioned figure, is gradually undermined by both the colleagues he himself promoted, and the world powers who are only after the wealth of the country, and it becomes clear that however much he tries, he’s entered a fight he ultimately can’t win.

It’s difficult to express just how powerful Ejiofor’s towering performance is. In lesser hands Césaire’s wordy speeches would have been a touch dry for today’s audiences, but in Ejiofor’s hands they spark to life, catch fire and burn with an incandescent intensity. Lumumba’s prime ministerial acceptance speech (“Everything that is crooked will be straightened”), delivered just after he’s jumped down from the balcony via a fireman’s pole, is quite simply electrifying.

In a production as good as this it feels like nit-picking to point out the things that don’t quite feel right, but it’s got to be done. For a start, the puppet heads are less than convincing. Instead of being menacing, they bring a childlike quality to the piece, although the puppet vultures do chill the air. But when Wright does get the gimmicky aspects right, they’re genius. Hundreds of tiny parachutes literally bonk the audience on the head, while a small line of tiny figures pulled across the stage represent a line of pathetic refugees.

Another problem, inherent in Césaire’s script, is that we don’t get to see much of Lumumba the man, only Lumumba the politician. Yes, he has a wife, Pauline (Joan Iyiola), but even in his scenes with her, politics is pretty much the only thing they talk about. He’s a hero and we see very few weaknesses which can make his character feel a little one-dimensional. Again, a lesser actor would have had real problems here, but Ejiofor steers through dangerous seas with ease.

But these are very minor quibbles, and quibbles that can easily be overlooked in the grand scheme of this astonishing piece of theatre.

Well, my son is now up to speed on the Congo (as am I) and I’m pretty sure he’ll look back on seeing this production when he’s older and think ‘I was there’ as it’s destined to be one of those productions that’s remembered for years to come.

WHAT: A Season in the Congo

WHERE: The Young Vic, The Cut, Waterloo, London

WHEN: Until August 24, various times

TICKETS: http://www.youngvic.org/home

RUNNING TIME: about 2 hours 15 mins

WOULD I SEE IT AGAIN: In a heartbeat

STARS: 4 (simply because of the tiny flaws, and I’m being cruel)

Stanmer Park and House is a glorious destination on any day of the year but on a scorchingly hot Sunday morning with the Kite Festival just warming up and with breakfast and theatre on the menu it seemed an idyll.

The garden was already full of people topping up their tan at 10am and people letting their dogs cool off in the fountain as we wandered in to experience a BITE-SIZE BREAKFAST experience.

White Room Theatre’s BITE-SIZE BREAKFASTS have been making a name for themselves recently, winning awards both in Brighton and Edinburgh (the only places that matter of course!), and even getting their own slot on SkyArts, and I was here to see a preview show that’s about to be launched on the Scottish capital next month.

The ‘menu’ on offer consists of five or six short plays – from 5 to15 minutes long – by up and coming playwrights from this country and abroad, plus a light breakfast and all-round relaxed atmosphere. The plays are a mix of styles – comedy, monologue, two-handers, surreal, drama, parody – and are performed by a troupe of six actors.

A large platter of strawberries was proffered while we waited to be seated in the marquee, the true ‘bite-size breakfast’ of the title really, and a very healthy start to the day. This was followed by a cup of coffee and some Danish pastries, which rather cancelled out my strawberry health kick!

Settled in, host Sophie made us all feel welcome and fussed about us all having enough water as she didn’t want anyone dropping dead from the heat. Also offered was a free raffle ticket to win a pair of tickets to another of the Bite-Size shows.

The breakfasts alternate in content, as well as venue, and we were seeing Menu 3: Interpretations, although there are also ones called Two’s Company and, suitably, The Morning After. They’ve also just introduced a special kids menu called The Big Bite-Size Play Factory’s Family Creatures which they’re going to bring down south again after Edinburgh.

The short plays began with The Rehearsal, in which a bloke talks to his imaginary ex-girlfriend about just how great his life has become since leaving her (“I’ve been people-central lately”) until she turns up and he goes somewhat to pieces.

Using, perforce, a sparse set, the play worked in the intimate surrounds of the tent and it was a situation almost everyone had been in at one time or another so was a good choice to start the morning off.

The Interpreter told of a meeting between an American ambassador and a colonel from a tinpot republic, and how their female interpreter handled the tense situation. Badly, in a word. A swearing competition in their respective languages was pretty funny, and the pay-off good.

Up the Hilary Duff was the duffer of the lot. A monologue from a bleached blonde bimbo running an exercise class in how to have a baby and still look fab on the maternity ward was just too cringey. Channelling Sybil Fawlty, the actress struggled with her material and the laughs fell flat.

Next on was the star piece, Transactions, a fabulously twisty turny tale of what’s real and what’s fantasy and how one can morph into another. It was played very well in a makeshift bed by two actors transacting some home truths. This short play was worth the admission price on its own (even if they’d taken away the pastries!)

It was a pity this didn’t end the show and that Waiting for Hashim did, a tale of middle class traveller one-upmanship that was a little bit ‘one note’. But it did end in a fierce bitch-scrap which everyone always adores.

Bite-Size is a strange concept if you think about it for more than a second – very short plays in the morning over coffee and cakes – but it obviously fills a hole. I’m guessing that at most festivals the breakfast slot is the quietest and therefore there’s less competition for people’s time, and Bite-Size also do corporate gigs which I’m sure are perfect for getting a room full of execs revved up.

For the price – £12/£10 – you can’t really go wrong here. Venue, food, drink and theatre: that’s an excellent package, and the surprise factor of not knowing quite what the plays are going to be about is tremendously enjoyable.

You can experience a Bite-Size Breakfast next down at the Latest Music Bar in Manchester Street, Brighton on July 20 and then again at Stanmer House (this time inside in the Henry Pelham Suite) on July 27, with doors to both opening at 10am.

 WHAT: Bite-Size Plays

WHERE: Latest Music Bar on July 20, Stanmer House on July 27

TICKETS: £12/£10

MORE INFO: http://www.bite-size.org.uk/

WOULD I SEE AGAIN: You bet!

STARS: Four

A selection of your favourite Gilbert & Sullivan operas, performed by former singers with the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, will hit the stage of the Congress Theatre in Eastbourne this Friday.

Accompanied by the British Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, with conductor Anthony Kraus, it will feature a fun selection from all of G&S’s works, such as The Mikado, Pirates of Penzance, Iolanthe and HMS Pinafore.

You’ll not only get the songs, but also some anecdotes of times spent in the D’Oyly Carte, plus some short dialogue scenes.

WHAT: A Feast of Gilbert & Sullivan

WHERE: Congress Theatre, Carlisle Road, Eastbourne

WHEN: Friday 19 July at 7.30pm

TICKETS: £24.50 with £2 off concs

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CLICK HERE:  

You could put forward a theory after watching Timber!, Southbank Centre’s newest circus act from Circus Alfonse, that its clunkiness, solidity, and general slowness is part of its authentic charm. It’s phooey of course, as the first and only real criteria a circus must fulfil is for it to entertain and in that, Timber! fails.

Timber! was put together in the French Canadian outback by a brother and sister as a 60^th birthday present for their old dad Alain who’d spent his life as a wallpaper-hanger but had always had a hankering to be on the stage. He’d driven the siblings hundreds of miles each week to stage school and they’d both ended up in the circus and Timber! is their thank you to him.

The aesthetic is Quebec’s lumberjack and logging tradition, with the boys all sporting beards of various sizes and bushiness, the two girls in their checked shirts and dungarees, and the set consisting of wood, wood, and more wood. And when the action starts, guess what? More wood! Yes, you get the picture.

Old man Alain (now 66) wanders about the set like, well, like it’s his birthday (still), obviously loving the limelight and it’s difficult to begrudge him that, but it has to be said that he doesn’t contribute a whole lot to the proceedings. In one ‘ouch’ moment for all us oldies, he is suddenly hoisted from his chair and suspended bouncing on a wire above the stage. He’s then twanged back and forth, looking like a gnomic christmas bauble, in such a bone-jarring way that you fear for his spine.

The boys and girls meanwhile are busy throwing small hand axes at each other, slowly. They’re heavy little axes you see, which don’t exactly zip from one hand to another, giving the impression they’re being juggled underwater. It’s not exactly scintilating, but this is the warm up, right?

The folk songs that intersperse or mingle with the action are in French, as are Alain’s rantings and ravings when he goes into a small cabin at the side of the stage to have a poo, and the younger guys won’t stop stamping on the top of it (the kids and the French people in the audience particularly loved this bit). The language, unfortunately, is a barrier as it means we don’t get to know the characters on stage. The beards don’t help either as it’s difficult to distinguish who’s who when everyone looks like Steve Bell.

Thinking back, I’m having problems remembering the tricks they performed as, instead of the tension being racheted up and the acts becoming more and more dangerous, more and more thrilling, it stayed on a plateau of the humdrum. No trick seemed to have a beginning, a middle, or an end: they just floated along in a haze of woodsmoke and sweat.

A girl brought out a whip. Oooooh, I thought, this’ll be good, but she didn’t use it to do anything except crack it like a mistress ordering a recalcitrant bunch of bears to parade around a ring. It went nowhere, as did a clog dancing routine played out on the big solid table, and as did the log-sawing which saw two beards saw a log with a log saw while the rest of the troupe sat on the log to keep it steady. This was presumably to show that the saw was real as then one beard swung it around in  a circle while two beards jumped over it (jumped….ish. They more sort of skipped around the edges).

Sometimes the music became beautifully atmospheric, as when a haunting tune was played on some old wine bottles, or when the band produced a bevvy of jew’s harps, but the singing left a lot to be desired, most of it being so out of tune that I cringed both inwardly and outwardly.

The lights go down. A torch is shined upon Alain sitting in a rocking chair, smoking a pipe. He begins to tell us a tale, in English this time (pity I could only make out one in every five words). Circus Alfonse’s trump card is pulled. Little Arthur, the youngest member of the family at only 2, appears by his grandpappy’s big shadow head and dances and claps along to the story, a big beaming smile covering his tiny chops. ‘Aaaaah,’ went the audience. ‘Bleugh,’ went cynical old me.

This circus runs until the end of the month as part of Southbank Centre’s Festival of Neighbourhood with Circus Alfonse fitting in with this theme by dint of their being a family, and the ones who aren’t family being from the ‘village next door’ to the family. It’s a nice little tie-in, but Timber! has some hard circus shoes to follow as London audiences will still have the exciting Limbo and the very good Flown still in their minds. And Timber! is just that bit too creaky to compete.

What: Timber! by Circus Alfonse

Where: Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, London

When: Until July 31, various times

Tickets: £15-£32

For more information, CLICK HERE:

Running time: 90 minutes (no interval)

Would I see it again: No

Stars: Two

“It’s 9pm and I’m waiting for my friend. I haven’t seen him in a long time.”

So begins Tim Crouch’s exploration of friendship, growing up and responsibility, in his new work that opened the Almeida Festival of experimental theatre last night.

And so it continues. It’s a constant refrain from Andy (Andy Smith), protagonist and narrator. “I’m waiting for my friend” punctuates this hour long piece even when his friend Tim has turned up with a bottle of wine and flowers. Sometimes it’s followed by “and I’m worried about him”, sometimes it isn’t. Are we in Waiting for Godot territory? Who bloody knows….

Here’s the deal. Crouch plays Tim, himself yet not himself, and Andy is played by Crouch’s friend Andy Smith, who is himself yet not himself. Confused? You will be….

Crouch wrote this play specifically to act with his old mate Andy, a theatre theorist who now lives in Oslo with his wife and kid (another is on the way and we were warned that if he didn’t appear tonight it was because he’d had to make a dash to be at the birth). Andy can’t act and it doesn’t matter. Mostly he sits in a chair with a script in front of him – after first taking his shoes off as it’s what they do in Norway – and alternates between talking to us, the audience, and ‘acting’ with Tim. He stares at us. He pauses. He pauses again. He pauses yet again. There’s an awful lot of pauses in this piece.

Crouch’s theatre has always been provocative, unusual, thought-provoking and, according to some, ridiculously pretentious. I’d never seen his work before, and I must admit that I was left slightly chilly by this piece. It didn’t help that there were obviously a lot of Crouch groupies in the audience who cracked up at the hint of a funny line and positively wet themselves when Andy asked us all to turn to the person next to us, shake hands and say ‘pleased to meet you’ (he’d just made a feeble joke about someone going to a church and mistaking ‘peace be with you’ for ‘pleased to meet you’ – cue rafter-high laughter).

So, to recap, we have Andy playing the Andy that Tim thinks Andy is, and Tim playing…himself? How Tim thinks Tim is? It does all get a little confusing, but once you’ve sort of grasped the characters and their relationships to the real people, it gets….well….even more confusing, but not in a wholly bad way.

The premise is that Tim hasn’t seen Andy for a few years and that they’re going to catch up. Andy is waiting for Tim. He’s waiting for him in real time and he’s waiting for him to grow up. Andy has the wife and child, he has a community he belongs to, he even has the self-possession to take his shoes off before he starts talking for fuck’s sake! He’s more or less a bloody grown up!!

Tim, on the other hand is, as he says himself, ’emotionally incontinent’ (“those are the words that are being slung around”). He gabbles, he has fits of harmless violence (he suddenly smashes the flowers he’s brought for Andy against the wall at the back of the stage), he mistrusts the little boys hanging around on the green outside who seem to be growing into a gang, he’s convinced the EDL are “planning a sort of Kristallnacht in the Chorley Road.” He’s a mess, but an active mess. “Fuck’s sake Andy,” is his mantra, like a nagging kid pulling at Andy’s trouser leg. He’s childish and needy – “Come and be with me” he pleads, as he sits on the sofa alone – “I am lost here. Move my arms and legs for me. You do it, you fucking do it!”

Andy, in comparison, is Zen-like. Inscrutable. Sitting on his chair with his script with a quiet smile on his face. In control. But he’s passive – not a mess, but passive.

How have these friends drifted so far apart? How do they come together again? Andy quotes a French philosopher who ‘suggests that love is a successful struggle against separation.’ And it’s clear that these two do love each other, do care for each other, and in the middle of the play they do come together and have a physical josh in the middle of the stage, involving water and tickling. Then they move apart. It’s a meeting in the middle of Tim’s frantic ‘doing’ and Andy’s equally frantic ‘thinking’. And I can’t think of a better way to show this than in a tickling bout.

Crouch also explores community in the piece, mostly through a series of quotes that Andy issues, but also by actions. Andy is grounded, centred in the two communities he lives in, and interested, through his work, in the dynamics of community theatre. Tim is mistrustful of everyone, is drifting, is lesser than Andy.

If fact, this piece seems more and more like a love letter from Crouch to his mate Andy. He’s saying to him “You’re a grown up now. You’ve made it. You’ve got somewhere. I’m nowhere.” It’s a paean to friendship and a piece loaded with self-loathing. Andy’s “I am waiting for my friend. I’m worried something has happened to him” makes sense as he is waiting for his friend to catch up with him in the evolutionary stakes, and he’s worried for him because he’s still way behind.

WHAT: what happens to hope at the end of the evening

WHERE: Almeida Theatre, Almeida Street, London

WHEN: Until 18 July, various days and times

TICKETS: £15/£10

FOR MORE INFORMATION: CLICK HERE:  www.almeida.co.uk/event/hope

WOULD I SEE IT AGAIN: no. or yes. or maybe. who knows?

Three stars

Sitting on a gantry watching Lady Macbeth lying in a pool of red silk, whilst a witch whistles across the black space below, I wonder just what’s down there. A compacted, dusty floor is my best bet, seeing as I’m on the archaeological site of Bankside’s first ever theatre, and only London’s fifth.

So when the Stygian gloom lifts I’m more than a little perplexed to find a black mirrored pool, with people scurrying about on the far shore like on a beach. In retrospect, the drip, drip, drip should have given it away but I simply assumed it was a sound effect.

It’s a startling theatrical space: damp, dark, cavernous and as steeped in history as any place could be. Shakespeare himself might well have trod the boards where I’m sitting, as a little way into the play a red rope light embedded in the floor is turned on and it’s clear that my feet, if not my body, are on the actual stage. I defy anyone to not be thrilled at that realisation – and what must the cast feel when they’re performing his words? It’s a closer Bardic experience for them than playing the Globe will ever be, seeing as the original of that theatre is not under the thatched roof down by the Thames, but nestled away under a Premier Inn round the corner.

I’ve come to see WHO Productions new take on Macbeth and it’s promising before anyone’s said a word. The atmosphere is set by sounds – whistling, a heartbeat drum, the aforementioned drip, drip, drip – so when the BBC News theme begins and a broadcast tells us of the corporate takeover of a large company (Crown Holdings – how apt) and Macbeth charges in dressed in a suit and with a mobile in his hand, the stillness is more than just shattered: it’s had a stick of dynamite stuck up its bum.

Things calm down a little and we get as much into the flow as we can with this odd production. Neither one thing nor another, WHO mash up styles like they’re going cheap in a sale. There’s a corporate vibe from Macbeth himself (Clive Moore), an African tribal one from the witches, and a spooky, ghostly one from Darkness (Lucien Campbell) who I don’t remember being in the play when I studied it at school!

Dressed in a black cape, the figure of Darkness pushes and pulls Macbeth, leans into him, lets himself be leaned into, envelops, crushes, and sometimes whispers. It’s a physical presence that just doesn’t work as his reason for being there isn’t clear enough. And that sums up the two big interlinked problems with this piece: the clarity issue, and the fact that it’s neither dance nor straight theatre. This second needn’t be a problem of course, but it is in this piece because of the first.

Moore, swigging whisky from his own private minibar, is good at showing Macbeth’s mercurial nature: one minute he’s all sound and fury, the next preternaturally calm, flummoxing his wife with his moods.

Francesca De Sica doubles up as Lady Macbeth and Banquo which, again, could work but doesn’t because of the lack of perspicuity in the dual roles. I can’t hear a lot of the dialogue from the witches as they all have heavy accents (Italian I presume, as WOH describes itself as having Italian roots) even though they’re so close to me, sometimes practically on my lap.

Being a very small playing space, the piece feels suitably claustrophobic, especially with its use of red curtains and cloth, but it opens out nicely by utilizing the space round the ‘lake’ where the actors are lit with torches or rudimentary lighting. I can’t see anyones face when they’re there, even though it’s no more than 20 meters away and that’s a bit disorientating when you try hard to catch what they’re saying as it bounces round the concrete walls.

This special venue could be such a fantastic backdrop for the right piece but alas, WOH’s Macbeth just isn’t that. But now I’ve been, I’m hooked on the place. They not only have performances, but talks about such things as bear baiting on Bankside, and they’re also on the brink of getting the funding to excavate a site that’s been left in a state of suspended animation for well over two decades, since it was discovered in 1989.

Bankside is a reclaimed marsh with a correspondingly high water table. The remains, once exposed to the air, began to deteriorate and so were covered over with water to preserve them – a bit like the Mary Rose I suppose. And hence the unexpected lake.

I stay around after the performance and talk to Pepe, one of the chief volunteers at The Rose (yep, it’s all run by volunteers, folks) who is obviously passionately in love with the place. I look at the illustrations on the walls which show what they think it would have looked like in Elizabethan (and briefly Jacobean – it was left to rot in 1603) times, and I fall in love with the place too.

Even if you don’t catch a show there, it’s well worth a look around. Thanks to the volunteers it’s open every Saturday from 10am to 5pm. Entry is free but a donation is gratefully grabbed and will go towards matching the funding they’re hoping to receive from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

What: Macbeth

Where: The Rose Theatre site, Park Street, London (about a 3 minute walk from the Globe)

When: Tues – Sat 7.30pm, Sunday 3pm only

Tickets: £12/£10

For more information: CLICK HERE:   http://www.rosetheatre.org.uk/

Would I go again: Yes, to the Rose, and yes to another of the performances they have lined up

Two stars

It was always going to be difficult to reimagine one of the best loved British comedy films of all time, but Father Ted creator Graham Linehan made an excellent fist of it when his Ladykillers emerged for the first time on the London stage in 2011.

Now, two years later the revival, complete with brand new cast, satisfies the old comedy appetite admirably. Lineham’s trademark absurdity abounds, as do his killer one liners. The piece does have its niggling problems but nothing that will spoil the enjoyment of a laughter-filled night out at the theatre.

Mrs Wilberforce (Angela Thorne), a widow who lives alone in a large and rickety old house next to the railway line at King’s Cross, puts an advert up to take in lodgers. What seems to be the perfect hide-out for a gang of robbers intent on a large rail heist, turns out to be a more complicated set-up than they imagined.

Fooling the old lady into thinking they’re musicians, things start to go downhill straight after the heist when they start squabbling amongst themselves and when Mrs W discovers their real purpose.

The ingenious revolving set is really the star of this show, showing us the inside and outside of the house (with a surprise pulled off at the end), and split vertically into Mrs W’s downstairs domain and the boys’ upstairs room. Looking like it might fall to rubble at any minute so wonky are the angles and rickety the stairs, the house seems to have a personality of its own and its heights reach right up to the top of the Vaudeville stage as it peters out in a structure that reminds one of an elaborate birdcage. Pots and pans rattle and shake as the trains run past and the lights flicker on and off as Mrs W clonks the pipes forcefully for no good reason.

Undoubtedly it’s John Gordon Sinclair who has the biggest boots to fill – Alec Guinness’s no less – as head heistman, the wily and refined Professor Marcus, but once you’ve put aside comparisons his subtle and understated performance shines through and anchors the piece well.

The rest of the gang are a bit more patchy. Ralph Little as wide boy Harry is a chronic pill-popper with an OCD cleaning mania. Channelling Carry On’s Alf Ippititimus, he spasms and twitches his way through the first half and should either tone it down or ditch it completely as there’s enough nicely played physical humour from the ensemble and his hamming it up just distracts.

Louis, played by Con O’Neill, is a Romanian hard man in menacing pinstripes who hates “little oiled ladies”, while Chris McCalphy as the dim and dozy One-Round is the nearest in voice and presence to his filmic counterpart.

Simon Day (him off The Fast Show) is a revelation, bringing fantastic comedy timing to his cowardly Major Courtney. As the only character with more than one dimension (he has one and a half), Day sketches him well, especially when it comes to his penchant for a nice lilac dress. He’s the con man you find your heart reaching out to.

An unseen presence is Mrs W’s parrot General Gordon who sits in a cage at the side of the stage. We hear him, we see his tablecloth-covering move and we get fantastic descriptions of him (“It looked like a starving baby in a sock” and “He looks like a diseased washing up glove”) but see him we don’t.

We do, surprisingly, get to see the heist itself, albeit played out with toy trains and cars on the side of the house. An ingenious idea, it doesn’t quite work in practice being a bit on the clunky side but perhaps it’ll get slicker as the production continues.

The most glorious scene overlaps the interval and involves a gaggle of Mrs W’s old lady mates who’ve turned up to tea to hear the gang’s special recital. I say old ladies, but there are a couple of Pepperpots not-so-hidden amongst them, and I’m sure I heard half the audience mutter to ther other half “Is that David Walliams? It can’t be!” and it wasn’t, but one Pepperpot, sitting on stage with a gleeful smile and ear trumpet, was the Little Britain’s spit.

Mrs W’s posse sit ‘oohing’ and ‘aahing’ and bursting into sharp little glove-muffled bouts of clapping while listening to what Marcus describes as ‘an experimental piece’ (“Being fooled by art is one of the primary pleasures afforded the middle class,” deadpans Marcus, a remark which went down very well on press night).

After the interval, the serious business of killing begins when the gang turn on each other as they decide who’s going to do away with “the little oiled lady”. Some of this comedy violence works well, but some (impalement by bannister anyone?) seems to be there just to show they can do it.

As the death count grows, the darkness descends until the stage is in virtual blackout and we hear Marcus taunting Louis (the only two still alive) about his childish fears before dispatching him in a very nasty way. But even then Sinclair plays it for laughs, giving the audience a knowing look as he slips the body out of the window as if it’s as light as a feather (which, of course, it is, being a prop).

Although not quite matching the calibre of cast this play was afforded on its first London run, this revival makes for an enjoyable and smile-filled night out. In my eyes, Graham Linehan can do very little wrong (I loved Count Arthur the other night and if you didn’t then there’s something wrong with you!) and in tackling such an iconic British film and coming up smelling of roses, he proves once again that he’s a writer who can both invent and reinvent marvellously.

What: The Ladykillers

Where: Vaudeville Theatre, The Strand, London

When: various times, see website

Tickets: £20-£85

For more information: CLICK HERE:

Would I see it again?: YES

Four stars