Stop Messing About
By Johnnie Mortimer & Brian Cooke
Directed by Michael Kingsbury
At Richmond Theatre 14th -16th June
And then on tour
Robin Sebastian marvellously re-creates Kenneth Williams in this reprise of some early Johnnie Mortimer & Brian Cooke radio scripts. He is superbly aided and abetted by Charles Armstrong (Douglas Smith), Nigel Harrison (Hugh Paddick) and India Fisher (Joan Sims) not to forget Timothy Dodd as Sound Effects. Mr Sebastian has managed to find a very authentic Kenneth Williams, without overstating them he has his mannerisms, retorts and catch phrases off to a tee and yet does not seem to be mimicking the character. The set is a re-creation of a BBC radio studio with some huge miniature transistor radios and the four principles standing in a line and it works astoundingly well as they dance, march and meander up to the various microphone to deliver their line beautifully on cue. Much has been said of Robin Sebastian and no doubt there will be more from his Kenneth Williams, but what was particularly impressive was the characterisations from the other cast members. I have to declare an interest here. As a boy fell in love with the early Joan Sims, the Joan Sims of Carry On Nurse and Carry On Teacher, and India Fisher’s Joan Sims is a Joan Sims I could still be in love with and yet at no stage does either herself or Nigel Harrison attempt to impersonate their relative characters, instead they have, delightfully, found the character of that person. I am certain that the real life Sims and Paddick were not the ones that we grew to love on film and here on radio, indeed, having read his diaries neither was Kenneth Williams. What they portrayed was the public characters of themselves and here the cast have managed to breathe their own lives into these characters.
Much of this production has been seen recently in the ‘Round the Horne’ tour and the original radio series was commissioned as a follow on to that series following the death of Kenneth Horne and kept the two writers already commissioned for the show, Johnnie Mortimer and Brian Cooke. Therein lays the difference between the two shows. The dead pan, gravel wit and controlling influence of Kenneth Horne was missing and Mortimer and Cooke were both learning their craft as writers as opposed to Barry Took and Marty Feldman who had experimented and learnt and had moved on. This series, in 1969, was at the end of a long history of similar shows stretching back to ITMA and others in the war time years. The series was slated by the critics at the time and only one more series was commissioned, written by Myles Rudge. Certainly the lines do not have quite the same edge or humour that was associated with Round the Horne, but the audience was laughing last night. I rather suspect that if you took the names away, recorded the scripts as new pieces of work they would win numerous award for being very original and funny, but then that may say a great deal about the current crop of radio comedy writers.
Here at least is a chance to see and hear these shows one last time, so stop messing about and book your tickets now!
Reviewed by Evan Rule
