No loss of dignity for show's actors

By [lcarroll]

IS THERE anything new in the theatre? Patrons of a certain age, like me, will remember the intimate revues of earlier years when a group of performers presented a programme of songs, dances and sketches.

This form lingered on with the Cambridge Footlights, once regulars to the Drum, but more or less breathed its last when the quartet of Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett, Peter Cooke and Dudley Moore – all Cambridge men – devised Beyond the Fringe.

Happily, this show echoes those old revues.

The success or failure of such productions depends on whether or not the material is funny, and how effectively the performers put it across. And this show is funny, really funny.

All the items have the theme of someone's loss of dignity. Intermittently players read out instances of undignified behaviour culled from the internet, but mostly the very varied stories have been scripted by the five writers.

Naturally, many of the topics would never have been included years ago.

But we live in a more sophisticated age, and nothing much shocks us now.

There's a lot about body functions, with inevitable bad language, which one mature member of the audience at the post show talk found regrettable, though she gamely accepted that it reflected today's standards, and she had nothing but praise for the show as a whole.

Highlights included the most embarrassing wedding reception speech ever, which had a bitter ending, and the running joke of a yobbo girl trying to pick up a fellow at a dance.

Even Woolworths and Iceland merited a sequence, as did bereavement counselling and boyhood rivalry.

Some sketches ended rather weakly – not an unusual situation which even Monty Python never completely mastered – but that's to be expected in such a show.

Overall, though, it delivers big time, and the four actors, Kathryn Drysdale, Hugh Skinner, Felix Scott and especially Kate Lyons, were all personable and superb.