Spike Milligan’s Adolf Hitler: My Part in his Downfall
By Spike Milligan
Adapted by Ben Power and Tim Carroll
Directed by Tim Carroll
At Richmond Theatre 25th – 30th January
Sholto Morgan, as Spike, leads this ensemble cast of Dominic Gerrard, William Findley, David Morley Hale and Matthew Devereaux as they take us through an assemblage of Milligan one liners and 1940’s jazz/swing numbers that is the memoir of Spike Milligan’s war. You have to admire the energy that the actors manage to generate on stage.
I have to confess that I am a Spike nut! From an early age I have adored his work and when asked will count ‘Puckoon’ as one of my favourite books. When you consider that the others on that list are ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’ and ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ I do believe that that is quite a complement to one of the funniest men ever, a Noel Coward of the ordinary people. His poetry is short and witty and pithy and always had the feel that you yourself could have written it, which meant of course that it would express your own feelings exactly and it always hit the correct sentiment. His drawings were concise and direct and had a style which could be compared to Lowry and Lowry was of course a genius. I am not the only one to think so, sufficient to say that every notable funny person since the 1970’s has either claimed Spike as a major influence or has claimed a comic directly influenced by Spike and of course he was voted the funniest person of the last thousand years. As far as I am concerned Spike gave birth to funny, but what a tragic life it was!
Plucked from the safety of South London, the British army trained Spike and thousands like him, including my Uncle to be ruthless killing machines in the battle against one of the most terrifying and brutal regimes, Nazi Germany. How on earth did we win! We won not in spite of, but because of men like Spike, men who knew that life was not about following orders, but about living life and that life was worth living and so was worth dying for.
What narrative there is in this piece is plucked directly from the first four books of Spike’s fantastic personal history of the war. Much of it is about his developing wit, but coupled with it is his the decline of great wit into that slough of despair that a manic depressive such as Spike. Through that tortured soul, there came the genius of ‘The Goons’. Sadly this piece does not do true justice to that genius, the songs are expertly delivered and the jokes still hit their mark and the audience laughed, but the show did not quite gel and all to often things were left awry. The lighting was either too subtle or was wrong, actors in the dark delivering lines is either very artistic or someone has made a mistake and here I think it was a mistake. The frenetic madcap world of army training and the absurdity that Spike found just did not seem to jump out and hit you in the face as I had rather hoped and things just seemed to misfire and not in the way that they perhaps should have misfired in. however all that said I did enjoy the evening and would recommend that you see the show and make your own mind up. I am glad that I did, but not too sure I would see it again, whereas I will read Puckoon till my dying day.
Reviewed by Evan Rule
