Review- One Man, Two Guvnors- Hong Kong Arts Fest
16-2-13
By: Tom Hope
Question: you review a show and end up on stage in it. Do you (a) give yourself a rave write-up and admit that without you the show would have been hopeless? (b) declare a hopeless conflict of interest and write nothing more? (c) make no mention of it and feel hopelessly compromised? or (d) stop wittering and get on with the review – and remember next time not to sit at the end of the second row of the stalls (left side) – unless, that is, you like being hauled up on stage as part of a show you’re reviewing because it gives you so much more to write about.
OK, so the cat’s out of the bag. I was on stage for all of 5 minutes with Chris, my ‘lucky’ co-seatee – as a pair of heavies to heft a trunk off-stage at the behest of Owain Arthur aka Francis, the ‘One Man’ who serves the ‘Two Guvnors’ and the rock around which this clockwork-synchronized romp rotates. (And yes, it’s the part played by James Curden of Gavin & Stacey fame when this show opened at the NT in London, who Owain replaced when Mr Curden took the show to Broadway.)
There’s little point telling you the plot (but if you want it, you can find it here, which also details the awards and other accolades this production has garnered to date). Richard Bean’s updating of Goldoni’s ‘Servant of Two Masters’ relocates to 1963 Brighton, with mods and rockers, gangsters and Beatlemania, but keeps breaking the fourth wall (in homage to the Commedia dell’Arte which underpins the original). A ‘fab four’ skiffle group The Craze played us (brilliantly upbeat and brylcreemed) to our seats in front of a mock music hall proscenium with ‘painted spotlight’ curtain, lifting to reveal a picaresque interior of garish hues and sharply angled ‘made for farce’ doors. We are in panto-land but with pubs for palaces and policemen for palace guards – policemen who don’t arrest anyone for murders we never see and which rest unatoned…
It’s a world where morality is more suspended than our disbelief. Each of the main characters takes a musical ‘turn’ with The Craze between scenes: Francis with a Tommy Cooper fez on xylophones, the 3 female leads dolled up as Dusty Springfields, and so on. The audience is insistently bowed to and beckoned in as the narrative loops through a series of vaudeville routines. It’s panto for grown-ups (and youngsters too – no bad language, nudity etc – if they can follow, or disregard, the plot's decreasingly significant convolutions).
And it’s utterly and consistently engaging and entrancing. The energy levels are high but effectively paced. The routines repeat without being repetitively dull. The gags – verbal, physical, slapstick, slap-happy – are funny. And the audience (even when on stage) has a great time.
Does it achieve its declared objective (per Richard Bean’s programme notes) of ‘an accessible, popular comedy that would find a new audience for the NT'? Well, clearly yes.
Is it more than just a romp? Perhaps, by invoking a theatrical world where rules are consistently broken yet everyone gets away with it, we get to wonder why and whether things might be otherwise. There are agit-prop moments when characters ruminate on the post-feminist Thatcherite world waiting for them, and maybe the rousing ‘Tomorrow Looks Good To Me’ finale is intended to evoke its Nazi precursor soundalike ‘Tomorrow Belongs To Me’…
But frankly, when you’re having such a great evening, why worry?
And when Owain Arthur aka Francis comes down from the stage after taking all his bows to shake Chris and me warmly by the hand and thank us for our participation, I’m all the more won over by the show’s gregarious generosity of spirit. (Perhaps, after reading this review, there’ll be an offer of a permanent cast role in the post. But that could of course compromise my reviewer role hopelessly…)
One Man, Two Guvnors is playing at the HKAPA through February 23rd. For more information, click here.
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