WHEN they get it right at Pitlochry’s theatre in the hills, there can be few better experiences on a summer’s evening. And when they get it as right as this sparkling production, it is well worth the trip from Edinburgh, Glasgow or Inverness, never mind Perthshire, for the pleasure.
You may have thought that there was not much mileage in turning the much-loved 1949 screen classic into a stage play. After all, we all remember how silky smooth Dennis Price as the slighted Louis Mazzini sets out to eliminate all the members of the D’Ascoyne family who stand between him and the dukedom. We all remember how Alec Guinness played all the members of the D’Ascoyne family, male and female. How, indeed, do you transfer such a story to the stage? As it turns out, it is the how that is the secret of this production’s success. Using the script originally written by Giles Croft for the Nottingham Playhouse, it calls on every trick in the house: models, picture frames, miniaturisation, puppetry; you name it, it’s in there.
And while tricksiness on its own can be a curse, here the tricks are deployed with such wit and delicacy by Richard Baron, the director, and his backstage team, and with such throwaway insouciance, that they are simply a pleasure to watch. The sinking of the naval D’Ascoyne, gradually submerging beneath a ripple of blue silk as his hat continues to float on the surface, was one favourite among many.
None of this would be any good without the hard working cast of six (only six? It feels more like twenty-six, so effectively do they people the stage). Some of the cameos are caricatures — one actor, as in the film, plays all the D’Ascoynes, in this case Gregory Gudgeon — but, again, they are thrown off with such verve that it all becomes part of the fun.
Aoibheann O’Hara as the scheming mistress and, above all, Hywel Morgan as the murderous Mazzini, are excellent. Morgan gets the mixture of debonair menace and suave determination just right.
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Perhaps there is a version of this story that asks why we so cheerfully want this mass murderer to get away with it in this blackest of black comedies. This is not that version. They haven’t got the ambivalence of the ending quite right but, otherwise, it is simply delightful.
In rep until October 22; box office 01796-484626