Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford – until 29 September, then touring
Reviewed by Antonia Hebbert
4****
Two ageing, failing actors stuck in a trailer with nothing to do but bicker – what could possibly go wrong? Even more than you think, actually, when the trailer is on a shifting Icelandic glacier with a volcano erupting underneath. So far, so much fun in this new play by Adrian Edmondson and Nigel Planer, who also play the sharp-tongued old luvvies, with Lois Chimimba as their harried assistant.
For those of us of a certain age (ahem), Edmondson and Planer are pretty much comedy royalty, who made their names in the 1980s with The Comic Strip and The Young Ones , the scuzzily brilliant sitcom about life in a student house. This play might as well have been called ‘The Old Ones’ – it has a lot of laughs, but it’s also a rather wonderful look back at lives spent in acting, which becomes more and more thoughtful as the play goes on. There are the reliable, perfectly timed jokes you might expect about acting and actors, but we also get an inkling of what it is actually like to spend your life in that world. And we get to hear Planer and Edmondson sing a little, which is charming in a quiet way.
Meanwhile, the volcano is getting hotter. A round of applause, please, for designer Simon Higlett’s beautifully recreated trailer interior, inconveniently placed on the erupting Eyjafjallajökull. Mic Pool (sound) and Murray Gold (music) provide jolly background effects. Steve Marmion directs.