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Jack Absolute Flies Again Theatre review: Fruity fun as rivals take to the skies
Writing duo behind One Man, Two Guvnors have created another rollickingly good farce
August 26, 2022 14:42
Writing duo behind One Man, Two Guvnors have created another rollickingly good farce
August 26, 2022 14:42Jack Absolute Flies Again
National Theatre | ★★★★✩
It was always a tall order for writers Richard Bean and Oliver Chris to repeat the rampaging success of their smash hit One Man, Two Guvnors. And they haven’t.
But by using many of the same ingredients, such as updating an 18th-century comedy (in this case Sheridan’s The Rivals), casting it with top comedy talent (here led by Caroline Quentin’s Mrs Malaprop), packing the show with direct address to the audience and single entendre gags so fruity it is hard to imagine anything was cut because it was too rude, the writing duo undoubtedly have created another rollickingly good farce.
All these ingredients combine to serve an affectionate lampooning of wartime Englishness. Set in 1940 against a backdrop of West Sussex rolling hills, the cherry on designer Mark Thompson’s chocolate box set is a Hurricane fighter plane suspended over Mrs Malaprop’s mansion which has been requisitioned by the RAF.
Caroline Quentin (Mrs Malaprop) in Jack Absolute Flies Again
Not that she minds. “I’ve always liked a man in uniform,” she confides. “I was hoping for a bomber squadron. A rear gunner who might find a little R and R with me appealing.”
The madcap plot hinges — or unhinges — on eponymous fighter pilot Jack (Laurie Davidson) who wants to revive the fling he had with Lydia Languish (Natalie Simpson).
But the war has blurred boundaries.
Upper and working classes are mucking in together to beat the Nazi threat and Lydia is now not only also a fearless flyer but fancies the squadron’s beefy, tattooed, mechanic from Yorkshire, the geographically named Dudley Scunthorpe (Kelvin Fletcher).
So does Mrs Malaprop’s maid Lucy (Kerry Howard) who does her best to scupper Lydia’s plans to slum it with her intended. Meanwhile, Jack dons a moustache, a tattoo and a Yorkshire accent to trick Lydia into falling for him instead of poor bemused Dudley, who has anyway fallen for Lucy as much as she has for him.
If there were doors on the set they would slam, and if there were a vicar his trousers would fall. But only in a way that simultaneously subverts and pays homage to the conventions of farce which is the knowing now-familiar signature of the writers.
Laurie Davidson (Jack Absolute)
