Jos Vantyler

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

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06/10/16

Festival Theatre, Edinburgh

The crowds of eager-faced youngsters milling happily around the foyer of the Festival theatre say it all – there’s a bona fide family show in town and everyone’s up for some good old-fashioned feelgood entertainment. Ian Fleming’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, first published as a novel in 1964 and made into a Disney movie in 1968,  made it to the stage in 2002 and it’s been thrilling audiences pretty much ever since.

Caractacus Potts (Jason Manford), a would-be inventor and recent widower, desperately needs to make thirty shillings in order to save an old racing car from the scrap-merchants. His two young children, Jeremy and Jemima (played on the night we attended by Hayden Goldberg and Caitlin Surtees) love the car too – particularly when their father has managed to buy it and has applied his unusual skills to customising it. Pretty soon the Potts family have a car that can do all kinds of amazing things… and then along comes Truly Scrumptious (Charlotte Wakefield), and a romance is soon in the air…

Of course, if your play is named after the car rather than a human character, you’re going to expect it to be pretty special and sure enough, the ingenious staging of this production really does convince you that the titular vehicle can race down roads, speed across water and even take to the skies. But perhaps the real revelation here is Manford, who has managed to make the difficult transformation from Northern stand up to an all-singing, all-dancing trooper. The boy really can hit those notes. And there’s no getting around the powerful spell woven by the wonderfully sinister Child Catcher (Jos Vantyler) who seems to have wandered in from a small child’s nightmares.

Okay, so not everything in the henhouse is perfect. The spectre of the scary foreigner, which hangs over the production in the shape of the Vulgarians, headed up by Baron and Baroness Bomburst (Phill Jupitus and Claire Sweeney), might make more enlightened hackles rise, but CCBB is very much a product of the era in which it was conceived – and perhaps it’s no great surprise from the creator of James Bond, a man who spent his early years working for Naval Intelligence. Nevertheless, there’s much here to enjoy.

What CCBB has in spades, of course, is those memorable songs – you’ll almost certainly exit the building humming the Sherman Brothers’ incredibly catchy theme song – I know we did. This is a classy production, slickly staged and perfectly tailored for a family audience. Be sure to take your kids to see it. They’ll believe a car can fly.

4.6 stars

Philip Caveney

 

 

 

The Merry Wives

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15/03/16

The Lowry, Salford Quays

The Merry Wives of Windsor must be one of Shakespeare’s most rumbustious comedies. Northern Broadsides, as the name might suggest, have their own unique take on the play. Set somewhere in the north of England, complete with regional accents (not a spot of RP in sight) and with a delightful 20s setting, this is like the immortal bard crossed with a Brian Rix farce. It’s fast, furious and laugh-out-loud funny – indeed, as an object lesson in making Shakespeare accessible to a contemporary audience, it’s hard to imagine how it could be bettered.

There’s surely little need to explain the plot. Suffice to say that lascivious blowhard, Sir John Falstaff, sets his amorous gaze on a couple of married ladies and they decide to exact a complicated revenge on him. There are a few small adjustments to the script. The fat woman of Brentford becomes the fat woman of Ilkley and I swear I heard mention of a marriage in Skipton, but otherwise this is pretty much the text, as written.

Broadsides veteran Barrie Rutter takes on the role of Falstaff with great relish, managing to make him a buffoon, but also evoking sympathy for his ultimate humiliation. As the wives themselves, Beckly Hindley and Nicola Sanderson are delightfully mischievous, while as Mistress Quickly, Helen Sheals seems to be channelling the late, great Hylda Baker. A word too about Jos Vantyler, who manages to portray feckless ninny, Abraham Slender in a style that would have made Rix suitably envious.

But it’s important to note that there are no weak links here. The eighteen strong cast are rock solid as they move smoothly from scene to scene and the play’s running time seems to just fly by. In what is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, here is a cracking example of why his work still speaks so eloquently across the ages. If you think you’ve seen every possible variation on Shakespearian comedy, think again.

This really is an absolute delight.

5 stars

Philip Caveney