Reading through my review of this show a few years back, nothing much has changed. Apart from the fact that Savadier has replaced James Borthwick (who is off touring), and that probably brought a breath of fresh air, with no one missing a beat.
From the reading of the hysterical programme notes to the slick and silly Mounties dance (with even someone the ilk of Hopkins desperately battling to keep from corpsing, from start to finish), the boys have you in their hand (well perhaps not). And you can’t help going from a grin to a guffaw throughout.
It’s fun for the audience and part of that is the obvious fun the four actors are having on stage as they literally run thought their sketches. Because of the lightness and laughter, it might seem easy to pull off, but it’s not. And it is that delicate skill of throwing it all out there, pointing that toe at a specific spot, kicking up a leg, darting those eyes around and around – just one more time – falling down and getting up and then falling down again, tripping over your feet and words in a way that is delightfully devious, all of that contributes to the constant grin on the face (happy to eat my words) of every audience member.
It is their skill that probably delights the most even for serious Monty Python fans. They have to get it spot on all the time and they do it with aplomb. Hopkins simply has to step on stage to get a smile, he’s that perfect. Landey and Fridjhon have gone from boys to men in the intervening years, but still manage to capture that youthfulness that works so well on their behalf. Fridjhon with the extraordinary hair with a life its own, or newsreader Landey without his bottom half, you simply have to see to understand.
It never stops and you have to scratch your head to recall all the good bits. There are simply too many.
Swerdlow has done Smiles’s brilliant comedy trilogy including Ying Tong – a Walk with the Goons, Good Evening and now second time around Pythonesque. He has the heartbeat of this one and knows exactly when to turn it up or down. Now they need to bring the others back too. And this one is planned to jet to LA.
Being the Pythons, it’s probably for a certain age if you are to catch every nuance, but theirs is comedy for the ages. And with this quartet and Savadier a great addition (he needed to be in Borthwick’s stead), you simply have to see this excellent ensemble at play.
They say comedy is much tougher than it seems. Well, seemingly not so for Swerdlow and his four coconut-clopping horsemen.