The Lass O'Gowrie, Manchester (ended 23rd Jan 2013)
Written by Bruce Robinson. Adapted by Ian Winterton.
Directed by Trevor MacFarlane
FIVE STARS!
Review
One of the
biggest cult movies around gets an absolutely wonderful stage adaptation in a
promenade performance at The Lass O’Gowrie pub. Writer/Director Bruce Robinson’s
low budget 1986 film told the tale of two struggling alcohol and drug-fuelled
actors who go on holiday ‘by mistake’ to the Lake district, and gave Richard E
Grant the role of his life. Such an iconic part is something of a poisoned
chalice for any actor, but Adam Grayson pulls it off brilliantly with a
performance of great intelligence, pathos and wit. Philip Barwood partners him
beautifully as the more understated and gentler ‘I’, and the chemistry between
them is electric. Using the entire space of the pub, the audience were guided
around by the enigmatic and charming
‘Presuming Ed’ (Gabriel Paul ) who wordlessly ushered everybody from one
scene to another. David Slack gave us a wonderfully theatrical Uncle Monty,
with a constant twinkle in his eye and an air of wistfulness as he reminisced
endlessly about a colourful past involving a great variety of athletic young
men. Eryl Lloyd Parry excelled as a crusty old poacher (complete with a real
catfish down his trousers), a curmudgeonly cake shop proprietor, and a nasty
bigoted drunk with a hatred of ‘perfumed ponces’. Ian Winterton adapts Robinson’s much-lauded
screenplay with confidence; wisely choosing not to reinterpret classic scenes
and dialogue too much. For fans of the film, every beloved character has their
moment in the spotlight – the versatile Steve Cain brought the house down with
his no-nonsense copper instructing a drunken Withnail to “get in the back of
the van!”, a surly cafe cook delivering a soggy fried egg sandwich with the air
of a man whose kitchen hygiene routine is probably close to non-existent, and a
farmer recovering from the amorous attentions of his prize bull. Cain’s
delivery and timing is excellent, with every character played with great
subtlety for maximum comic effect. The female characters were all played by
Annie Wallace, beginning with the dishevelled cafe customer biting into her
fried egg sandwich after carefully surveying it with the cold pitiless eyes of
a jungle cat. Her frosty, hyper suspicious farmer’s wife was another
beautifully judged comic cameo, and the mousey Miss Blennerhassett was a hoot –
treading on eggshells while serving tea and cake to Penrith’s visiting scum. As
with the character of Withnail, Danny the drug dealer was another career-making
film performance for an actor (Ralph Brown), and could easily have been
parodied on stage by a less skilled performer than Dickie Patterson. Sauntering
around like a sheepskin-coated apparition, Patterson dispensed his chemically
enhanced wisdom like a bobble-hatted, sunglasses-wearing tranquilised meerkat. The
sozzled, racist ex army innkeeper was played to perfection by Richard Salis,
and after spending almost the entire play herding the audience around, Gabriel
Paul’s disturbingly charismatic Presuming Ed eventually made an appearance
towards the end. A special mention must go to Paul Phillips who supplied a
dazzling variety of sound effects, expertly creating a superbly atmospheric
tonal landscape (with a suitably 60s musical selection that complimented the
onstage action perfectly). And last but not least we had a live chicken who
almost managed to steal her one scene from literally under the noses of her
co-stars.
A perfect
ensemble cast created a feast of memorable characters, but it is Adam Grayson’s
majestic and immortal Withnail that shone the brightest of all. His delivery of
Hamlet’s soliloquy ‘What A Piece Of Work Is A Man’ was rousing, spine-tingling,
and gut-wrenching. Director Trevor MacFarlane has accomplished something very
special indeed, coaxing pitch perfect performances from every member of his
cast, and delivering a production that deserves to be seen much further afield
than the Manchester Fringe.
One cannot
praise this production highly enough, proving that in the right hands a classic
movie that has indelibly imprinted itself upon the psyches of millions of
fanatical devotees can find new life on the stage. True 3D, in fact.
This review was previously published at http://www.thepublicreviews.com/withnail-and-i-the-lass-ogowrie-manchester/
Tags: Withnail And I, Bruce Robinson, Ian
Winterton, Trevor McFarlane, Lass O’Gowrie, Adam Grayson, Philip Barwood, Steve
Cain, Dickie Patterson, Annie Wallace, David Slack, Richard Sails, Gabriel
Paul, Eryl Lloyd Parry, Manchester, Paul Phillips
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