Yippee Ki Yay
A daring and innovative show which is resplendent in its writing, engagingly delivered, and absolutely perfect for the run up to Christmas
Norwich Theatre Playhouse and Rod Penn
There's nothing remotely new about stage plays written for just one actor -Willy Russell's 'Shirley Valentine' is a much-loved example. Or classic drama being adapted for solo performance - Norwich's Simon Floyd does a truly excellent 'One Man Macbeth'. Even cinema films have been given the Hans Solo treatment for the stage – Charles Ross' 'One Man Star Wars Trilogy' has been performed more than one thousand times to audiences worldwide. But I cannot remember ever having seen a classic film script re-worked and presented as a one-man, rhyming relationship stage epic. Until last night, at Norwich Theatre Playhouse.
Richard Marsh is a former London slam-poetry champion turned playwright who had already taken four shows to the Edinburgh Fringe before writing 'Yippee Ki Yay', his one-man re-visitation of 1988's iconic big-screen action drama 'Die Hard'. After receiving four-star reviews at this year's fringe, 'Yippee Ki Yay' is currently enjoying a London residency at the King's Head Theatre, and is also on a short provincial tour during the run up to Christmas.
Because 'Die Hard' really is a Christmas film, right? Even though it was released to cinema audiences in July 1988, its perennial themes of fallibility, vulnerability, and redemption through extreme violence guarantee its place towards the top of many a top ten list of yuletide favourites.
And Richard Marsh succeeds in taking 'Yippee Ki Yay' one floor further, exploding the film's plot-holes and creating a hilarious unauthorised parody that, for 70 minutes, follows the epic battle of wits between off duty New York cop Jon McClane and hostage-taker/safe-cracker Hans Gruber. Marsh's characterisations of Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman are absolutely spot on, and the stage props are breathtaking in their audacity – a zinc tub and a toy watering-can making do for the water feature on the 30th floor of the Nakatomi Plaza.
Meanwhile, in a daring display of dramatic duality, Marsh creates his own double-helix of a storyline that intertwines itself into the plot, and takes us through the past ten years of his own personal relationship drama. Which began, you guessed it, on a date to watch 'Die Hard'.
A daring and innovative show which is resplendent in its writing, engagingly delivered, and absolutely perfect for the run up to Christmas. This should become as much a regular part of our Yuletide build-up as Jarrold's Christmas lights, or Sh!t Theatre's Sing-Along-a-Muppet Christmas Carol.
“Yippee Ki Yay, motherf**kers!”
