Pythonesque
DIRECTOR: Alan Swerdlow
CAST: Robert Fridjhon, Graham Hopkins, Theo Landey, Russel Savadier
VENUE: Theatre on the Bay
UNTIL: April 11
RATING: ****
Roy Smiles’s celebration of Pythonesque humour has the same zany inventiveness that distinguishes the Monty Python sextet: the opening gambit gives some idea of what is to follow as the audience is welcomed to a performance of The Cherry Orchard featuring the Finnish National Herring Co-operative as well as the Outer-Mongolian Dynamite Rabbit Ballet Company... Humph!
Instead of staging a collage of sketches culled from the rich repertoire of M Python and Co, this show traces the evolution of the team’s comic endeavours, starting from their Oxbridge days as students. Predictably, there is nothing smacking of the dry biographical style here. It starts with the arrival of the recently deceased Graham Chapman at the Pearly Gates, where the gatekeeper, sporting a cloth cap and very plebeian accent, requires him to explain his past before any decision can be made regarding admission. Thus begins the history of Monty Python, complete with illustrative sketches.
Among these is the sine qua non of the Parrot, as well as the Cheese Shop – but they are modified to freshen the inspired lunacy of the originals, with the cheese transformed into CDs of past Python shows and the dead parrot morphed into a polyglot budgerigar. Alan Swerdlow’s directorial skills are shown to full advantage in this production, which makes stupendous demands on the stamina and versatility of its cast. Four actors not only play the six members of the Python troupe (Fridjhon impersonates Michael Palin and Terry Jones, while Landey takes on Terry Gilliam and Eric Idle), but in addition the entire cast has to fill multiple roles involving lightning-changes of costume, sex, age, and accent. There is ne’er a flicker of hesitation or ineptitude as they plough through the evening’s agenda.
Hopkins (John Cleese), and Savadier (Graham Chapman) are outstanding without detracting from the performance of their co-actors. This is team work at its most impressive, and despite the length of the production, time passes all too quickly for an audience that appreciates the outrageous incongruities on which Pythonesque humour depends.
If you are already a fan of Monty Python, this is not to be missed.
If not, it may be worth a visit to find out why the manic team of Cleese and Co have enjoyed such enduring popularity since the early 1970s.