Review: A COMPANY OF RASCALS, Yvonne Arnaud Theatre
Photo credit: Harry Elletson
The programme for the two headers proclaims 1 cast, 2 plays, 5 locations and 26329 laughs (subject to availability) and having watched Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors at the matinee, we stayed on to see Phil Porter’s A Company of Rascals in the evening. As a result, we could judge whether that marketing claim was fair. In reality, it felt like 3 casts, 1and a half plays, 2 shared locations and although we lost count, we can only imagine that the laugh count must be over the whole run!
Phil Porter’s comic writing stands up very well against the 430-year-old verse of the original play, drawing inspiration from Richard Bean’s brilliant One Man Two Guvnors in resetting it to the 1960s, to John Sullivan’s Only Fools and Horses with its crooked characters in Little Italy, London locations and to the great Brian Rix farces where the men drop their trousers with the slightest of encouragement. What is more, much of the new material (in the three new scenes) stands up well to those comparisons although occasionally, there is a sense of “padding” to keep the two simultaneous plays on track.
The play starts and ends with Shakespeare’s words set in Ephesus (just outside Peckham) and relies heavily on the set up of the solemnity of Egeon’s speech in Act 1, which sets out the narrative of the two sets of lost twins both called Antipholus and Domio (Cast 1) and the neat (although highly unlikely) family reunion at the end of Act 5. While the confusion of the twins’ identities is the feature of that story, Porter explores what is happening in another part of the town to the minor characters (Cast 2). The Ensemble (Cast 3) create a team of comical extras dressed as nuns, policemen and other rascals.
If you are fans of Sara Crowe and Robert Duncan, then A Company of Rascals brings you much closer to them both, in more intimate settings and they both shine in their characterisations. Duncan is the merchant of Syracuse, Egeon, arrested on arrival in Ephesus by boat and gradually stripped of his dignity and his clothes, and Crowe doubles up as Shakespeare’s Aemila, an Irish Abbess and a waitress in the Italian café, Portpentine (referenced in The Comedy of Errors) . However, when we meet Aemila in A Company of Rascals in the Centaur Inn, she is a con artist who Egeon is duped by and we never truly follow how she is not recognised when she appears in the Abbess garb at the end! The writing and execution of the Centaur Inn scene (half of Act 1) is very clever and funny, weaving The Comedy of Errors’ off stage characters into a clever subplot with some excellent business with identical bags (one with 1000 marks, one with a sandwich, one with some laundry and one with a ferret) and some good business about the gold chain that Shakespeare’s Antipholus of Ephesus has commissioned for his wife Adriana from goldsmith, Angelo (played by local favourite and founder of Guildford Shakespeare Company, Matt Pinches).
The minor Shakespearean characters are elevated with a courtesan (played by Katie Carlton) appearing as the landlady of the Centaur Inn fleshing out her Shakespearean subplot, and Pinch (played by Soroosh Lavasani) becoming a ludicrously over the top fake mystic (and one of another set of identical twins with the Officer) who entertains us in his grotto without developing the plot! As Egeon observes at the end of scene, “What the blazes was that?”. The third new scene in Portpentine café (with the Yvonne Arnaud’s own café being transformed after the lunch service ended) is pure pantomime when an escaped ferret causes mayhem amongst the diners. The innuendo is clever too with a lovely line inviting someone to “have a bit of sauce between the sheets” by having a lasagne! You have to see this scene to make any sense of way the characters appear in the final scene in The Comedy of Errors! These may seem like plot spoilers but the whole plot is spelt out in the programme with a two-page synopsis to ensure we follow the confusion, which ever play we are watching, and then can simply sit back and admire the wittiness of Porter’s script and the comic timing and business of these three new scenes.
The overall day was something of a curate’s egg and to our surprise, it is the new writing that impressea and outshinea Shakespeare’a verse. Joanna Read’s direction seems far more creative and the comedy sharper in A Company of Rascals than in the rather traditional presentation on the main stage and that seems to translate into actors having more energy and having more amusing interactions in the new scenes, so most of those claimed 26329 laughs (many were not available at the matinee we saw) came in Porter’s work rather than the more laboured main stage scenes. The improvised business covering the movement of the audiences between scenes feels more natural and adds to the play, whereas in The Comedy of Errors it seems the opposite slowing the pace and amusement.
We would highly recommend seeing A Company of Rascals, but make sure you have re-read the synopsis of The Comedy of Errors before seeing it and if you do book for both, see Comedy first. We feel if you see The Comedy of Errors alone, it leaves you even more confused in this version than Shakespeare intended and rather flat as if he is still developing his comedic style in this, his first comedy. Porter builds on the characters well, adding yet more farce and funny lines which, in the hands of a large enthusiastic cast, successfully creates a highly amusing new play.
**** Four stars
Reviewed by: Nick Wayne