Round the Horne
What could be more comforting on a cold winter’s evening than a huge chunk of comedy nostalgia. And on glancing at the audience I think I was not alone in thinking exactly that, we were pretty much all of a certain age, that age being old enough to have experienced the golden age of radio comedy.
Round the Horne was enjoyed by millions back in the 1960s and for the masses it was the soundtrack that played on your wireless as the Sunday roast was prepared and served. Last night the only thing missing was the smell of a roast dinner.
Taking those classic Barry Took and Marty Feldman scripts and placing them on stage is a brilliant idea. Staging them in the format that a live radio theatre audience would have originally seen and heard them works excellently too, a simple red curtain, a small sound effects department dually operated by musical entertainers Java Jive and a row of chairs and period microphones – no more is required and no more is given.
No more except for some excellent performances as the cast recreate those classic scripts that are so loaded with sexual innuendo that it defies belief that the BBC would not only broadcast them but broadcast them at lunchtime – and on a Sunday!
It also poses the question what was I laughing at as a boy under ten, when there was no doubt that I had little idea of what much of the humour was about. I suspect it was funny voices and the contagious nature of laughter from my parents and grandparents.
Julian Howard McDowell makes an excellent Kenneth Horne, the image of BBC propriety, Alex Scot Fairley is wonderful as Hugh Paddick and Tim Astley makes a fine job of playing announcer Douglas Smith.
The toughest job of course has to be playing Kenneth Williams and that is simply because Williams is the best known of the originals and has the most recognisable voice. Colin Elmer is excellent in every sense, rolling his Rs and his eyes, squealing and mugging as he slips in and out from character to character and milking every last word for laughs.
Finally Eve Winters who plays Betty Marsden, one of the great comedy voices of the era and one she captures so wonderfully, she was the star of the whole last night perfectly delivering her lines with the clipped and mannered style of a long gone age.
Java Jive, Rachel Davies & Anthony Coote, deliver their numbers with both skill and appropriate period style too and the audience lap it up.
Leaving the theatre there was a real sense of satisfaction, a sense that we had been taken back to enjoy a comedy format from over fifty years ago that no doubt inspired some of the great comedy formats of the ensuing years and one that still works today.
Andrew Kay
Theatre Royal Brighton
31 January
Rating:
