★★☆☆☆
Well, I suppose it’s proof that he’s human after all. Alan Bennett has produced so much memorable work in the past few decades — his monologues at the Bridge Theatre in London helped us through lockdown too — that it’s easy to assume that he can never have produced anything that was less than first-rate.
Then along comes Patrick Marber’s revival of a farce with intellectual trimmings that makes lots of lubricious noises but turns out to be an oddly cold and ponderous affair. If Harold Pinter had been called in as script doctor on Confessions of a Window Cleaner, the results might not have been dissimilar.
Some people, I suppose, are going to be offended by the constant references to big breasts. The word “busty” pops up often, and a pair of enormous false breasts is the script’s McGuffin. You might not be surprised to hear that the original West End production, which starred Alec Guinness, no less, also featured the pneumatic Madeline Smith in the role of sexpot Felicity Rumpers. (The randy vicar — played at the Menier by the droll Matthew Cottle — is called Canon Throbbing.)
The real problem isn’t the smutty humour, it’s that the plotting is so laboured. Farce should be quick on its feet; this play has boots made of concrete. Bennett’s script strips away what he calls “the paraphernalia”, with just three chairs taking the place of the usual fripperies. Marber’s production goes a step further, a coffin dominating a stark set by Richard Hudson with a backdrop of a dreamy seascape. Why a coffin? Because, as the play keeps reminding us, all that chasing after sexual pleasure is just a distraction from our knowledge that the worms will get us in the end.
The cast — who occasionally break into cod-Shakespearean verse — give it their best. Jasper Britton is cool and calculating as the philandering GP Arthur Wicksteed. Kirsty Besterman plays his melancholy, flat-chested daughter, who is transformed by the falsies that she has ordered through the post. Abdul Salis is the engineer who arrives to inspect them but assumes that the mantlepiece-like chest of the doctor’s neglected wife (Catherine Russell) is where he is supposed to get to work. Far from being offended, Mrs Wicksteed thoroughly enjoys the attention.
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That’s about as much as you need to know. There’s sweet period music from David Cassidy to Eric Clapton’s Layla, plus a burst of Dies Irae from Verdi’s Requiem, but the piece never gets out of second gear. It’s fun to watch Ria Jones upstage everyone as the blustering charlady, Mrs Swabb, and if you remember the 1970s there’s some pleasure to be had catching the references to Ted Heath et al. Otherwise you would be better off watching vintage Benny Hill sketches on YouTube.
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