One Man Two Guv'nors
Anarchy and madness spills from the stage and infects the audience from curtain up.
Skiffle. A word evocative of high art and refinement. As a musical genre, critics and historians agree it to be without parallel. The finest composers and performers of history have used it to pluck at the heartstrings of listeners, legends such as Lonnie Donegan, The Quarrymen (whatever happened to those boys?) and JS Bach. Indeed the latter pioneered skiffle - baroque fusion in the early 1720’s culminating with the magnificent ‘Mass in B minor; does your chewing gum lose its flavour?’ written for tub bass and harmonica. High society of the day would dance the hobnail minuet to it (a dance in 3/4 time where you drop your trousers at the end). It was with great excitement then that our evening began with the accompaniment of an early 1960’s style skiffle group who entered with much pomp(adour) and circumstance, and maintained an authentic tone throughout. The washboard sang playfully over the audience as thimbled fingers danced delicately across its melodic ridges. Music featured prominently in the play with a variety of instruments employed. Old car horns, a xylophone, steel drums and a gentleman’s nipple were all played with virtuosity and gusto.
The play itself is an adaptation of the eighteenth century Italian comedy ‘Il servitore di due padroni’ (servant of two masters) with the original plot being transposed almost unchanged to 1960’s Brighton. The classic elements work extremely well in the new setting with mistaken identities, disguises and incorrectly delivered letters creating a hybrid of a Carry On film with a Joe Orton farce. To say the show is a bit silly is like saying The Titanic pranged an iceberg. It may be an entirely accurate observation but does not tell the whole story. Chaos ensues as the titular one man’s confusion over which guv’nor he is serving at any one point grows when all he really wants is to enjoy a quiet lunch. To describe something as silly should not strip it of worth. Touring the UK for the third time, this National Theatre production deserves the mountains of heaped praise. Almost without exception the audience were beside themselves for the duration and for the most part I was too. There were times, however, when some of the 1960’s humour felt too obvious, too easy or too familiar. As with the original source material the play deals with stock characters but to a modern audience the line between archetype and stereotype blurs. It raises the question, can a period piece ever be dated? Well, yes, yes it can. Perhaps not in style or tone but at points in content. Still, the jokes came at such pace I was never left straight faced for long.
As with any period production, one joy for me is in the costume. The show is filled with dapper suits, floral tea dresses and an enormous and perfectly spherical beehive that resembles a hairy crash helmet. The need for this is made explicit when the character is shot out of a cannon in Act 2.
Anarchy and madness spills from the stage and infects the audience from curtain up. Go share in the insanity.
