Review: DON’T DILLY DALLY, Salisbury Playhouse - Tour
For older generations, the words “Don’t Dilly Dally” recall only one thing, the 1919 music hall song popularised by Marie Lloyd (1870-1922), one of many songs about working class women and their unreliable men with a saucy innuendo undertone that were the main stay of Victorian entertainment.
British Music Hall was a combination of rousing songs and outrageous comedy acts, all under the watchful eye of a gregarious chairman who announced the acts and encouraged the audience to join in. As cinema and radio emerged to entertain the masses with a post World War I rejection of the saucy drinking culture, it declined. It was authentically recreated in the BBC series The Good Old Days (1953-1983) compered by Leonard Sachs (1909-1990). Yet the songs and the jokes live on and this delightful entertainment by Green Room Entertainment provides a fun nostalgic escape to a simpler time and the twenty-song hand sheet provided to use to join in was hardly needed by the matinee audience!
The sartorially dapper Tom Carradine with his glorious moustache starts the show and accompanies all of the artistes on the piano. Any football fan will recognise the original ‘I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles’ and ‘Knees Up Mother Brown’ that opens Act 1, or recall the upbeat songs that open Act 2, ‘You Are My Sunshine’, ‘When You’re Smiling’, and ‘Bring Me Sunshine’ that simply are a joy to sing along to. On the opposite side of the stage, the irrepressible Ben Stock acts as a charming chairman for the show with gavel in hand. He too gets the audience singing along to ‘Down at the Old Bull and Bush’ and ‘Leaning on a Lamppost’. Carradine and Stock combine around the piano as music hall double act Flanagan and Allen in ‘Underneath the Arches’ and ‘Strollin’’.
Kane Verrall brought the cockney charm and swagger to the show with ‘Maybe It’s Because I’m a Londoner’, ‘The Lambeth Walk’ and ‘Let’s all go down the Strand’, then returns with ‘Standing at Corner of the Street’ working the audience well. While Rosemary Ashe sang ‘Because He Loves Me’, ‘Two Lovely Black Eyes’, and ‘Two Little Sausages’ adding pathos to her tales of the gentlemen in the songs. Ashe and Stock (in lederhosen) combine wonderfully for ‘My Old Dutch’ and ‘I Am Sixteen’.
The comedy turns are provided by the hilarious Richard Gauntlett in a series of very silly but amusing sketches including the Gilbert and Sullivan song from the Mikado “Tit-Willow” with the emphasis on the Tits, and then a brilliantly executed version of the ‘Roses in Picardy’, which has the audience crying with laughter. In the second act, he “recreates” the Houdini escape from a strait jacket and chain with the help of an audience member adding to the fun.
Isabella Mason was left ‘Waiting at the Church” with a note telling her that “my wife won’t let me!” She returned to close the show with a tribute to Marie Lloyd with ‘Little of What You Fancy’, ‘Oh Mr Porter’, ‘The Boy I Love’, and ‘Don’t Dilly Dally’
It may be over one hundred years since these songs entertained the public in Music Halls around the country but the tunes and the words have been passed down through the generations, kept alive by that BBC show and now this utterly charming entertainment touring the regions brings it to new audiences.
**** Four stars
Reviewed by: Nick Wayne
Photo credit: Supplied by the production
Check out their website for future tour dates: https://dontdillydally.co.uk/