This will be a jolly nostalgia trip for some but a night of mystifying tumbleweed for others. And Robert Mountford deploys a lot of Peter Cook-style pomposity as Spike's exasperated commanding officer - and his loathed BBC controller. George Kemp is suitably self-satisfied as dapper ladies' man Peter Sellers.Īlthough Jeremy Lloyd, as Secombe, is not quite Welsh enough, he's alarmingly good at Harry's explosive, squealing laugh. Just as much fun is Margaret Cabourn-Smith, as the woman in charge of The Goon Show's myriad sound effects. But his best moments are set pieces, including bashing a typewriter in time to Leroy Anderson's light music ditty, The Typewriter.
As Spike, John Dagleish is a manic malcontent who finds mirth even in the depth of his despair, brandishing a noose labelled 'single use'. Paul Hart's cast do, however, perform with verve. Both script and production could be leaner, and tighter. But it leans too heavily on limp gags that fall flat on modern ears. Set in a radio recording studio and recreating madcap Goon Show sketches, as well as the stresses of writing those sketches, the play is nothing if not ambitious. He impersonated an Italian lover at a dance, to woo his first wife, June and later kept her out of his office with a sign reading: 'Do Not Disturb - Disturbed Enough Already.' But most of all, the sepulchral setting creates a scale and solemnity equal to the play's darkly unfolding themes.Īlas for us, the play has now been cancelled because of Covid. Costumes are sedulously precise, down to the hem of Dolan's habit, soiled in the cloister gardens.Ī distant piano lesson, squawking crows and moaning sirens add to a sense of peculiar unease. I was completely enthralled by this titanic clash, in Lia Williams's cracking production staged, sardonically but significantly, in black and white. But Sister Aloysius is having none of it. Spruell's lean, rangy physique and warm smile make us inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.
And yet her forensic mind and steely determination to defend and nurture her pupils grows on us - even as our faith in Spruell's charismatic priest, who is loved by the boys, begins to rot.ĭolan's New York accent reminded me of Ruby Wax and, in some terrifying turns of mood, she has Wax's ferocity, too. James is tricky and evasive - a deadpan fibber offering ad-libbed assurances to his sons.Įssiedu plays two kinds of needy young men, anxiously seeking certainty around their crumbling identities, as well as the blasé American who doesn't care either way.īest known from the film starring Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman, Doubt features a tightly drawn plot that's as clever and manipulative as its leading characters are tense and suspicious.Īs Sister Aloysius, headmistress of a Catholic boys' school in New York's Bronx of the 1960s, Dolan seems at first loftily authoritarian. It's a script that needs rescuing by actors and in Lyndsey Turner's vividly staged production on Es Devlin's sunset-red studio flat, James and Essiedu are at least watchable as they tramp in circles around each other. So what was all the fuss about? A Number feels like a maze without a centre, and after so many narrative dead ends, I simply lost interest. That, at least, is my best guess at the rambling, self-contradictory set-up that ends with the father meeting a third cloned son - a happily married, American maths teacher who has three children and isn't in the least bothered about not being unique. Later, the young man comes to fear being killed by a brother clone who is angry at being betrayed by their putative father.
#TWO DOOR CINEMA CLUB TOUR AZ MARQUEE TV#
At London's Old Vic, Lennie James, star of Line Of Duty and Save Me, has taken a break from TV to appear alongside Paapa Essiedu in Caryl Churchill's A Number
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