★★★☆☆
Here come Rex and Roger in their Union Jack waistcoats, ready to raid the past and the dressing-up box in the name of educational entertainment. This show is the latest in Birmingham Stage Company’s successful series of stage adaptations of the popular children’s books by Terry Deary. There are no 3D effects this time, but otherwise it’s the usual whistle-stop tour of history’s back alleys and byways, with knockabout, quick-change songs and sketches, scatological humour and plenty of gory detail.
The formula is well worn, and the gag-laden script by the director and performer Neal Foster dredges up some outdated references (spoofs of Jeremy Kyle and Dick Emery among them). Yet it’s still briskly delivered and reliably entertaining, and the young audience were noisily appreciative of its low-tech, high-energy, irreverent brand of fun.
Jacqueline Trousdale’s design presents a pair of coat stands festooned with costumes and props, from which Rex (Foster) and Roger (Morgan Philpott) grab the wigs, capes, farthingales, swords and stuffed toys that add sauce to the storytelling. We kick off with a round of Brexit jokes before flag-waving nationalism is undercut by a string of reminders of Britain’s mongrel heritage. It’s explained that the Saxon warrior princess Ethelfled (a dragged-up, bearded Philpott), daughter of Alfred the Great, was of Germanic origin, as were the Angles who gave England its name; while Foster as the invading Frenchman William the Conqueror performs a hip- hop number of snooty Gallic triumph.
Henry VIII goes on a Location, Location, Location-inspired property hunt, kicking Cardinal Wolsey out of Hampton Court Palace; there’s a thigh-slapping oompah number for the reign of the Hanoverians, and an entire routine constructed around a fart joke involving Elizabeth I and Edward de Vere, a nobleman sometimes alleged to have pseudonymously written Shakespeare’s complete works.
The timeline zigzags about and the choice of historical anecdotes feels a bit random — a more coherent structure would give the piece extra zing. Still, it’s cheerily subversive, eccentrically informative and probably just the ticket for a school holidays treat.
To August 28, nimaxtheatres.com
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