Museum of Comedy 4 February – 12 March. Reviewed by Claire Roderick
Fantabulosa!
Watching Round The Horne is like wrapping yourself in a cosy old blanket – you’ll leave feeling warm and fuzzy with a huge smile on your face.
The classic radio show only ran for four series in the 1960s, but the superb material written by Barry Took and Marty Feldman has found new audiences ever since.
Tim Astley has chosen some of the best sketches and compiled them into 2 episodes, following the same pattern as the original show. At the interval you are invited to partake in the meagre BBC refreshments!
Two episodes means that the audience gets to enjoy double helpings of Dame Celia Molestrangler and aging juvenile Binkie Huckabuck, Julian and Sandy (they turn up in a James Bond spoof as polari spouting versions of Q) and Rambling Syd Rumpo (with sing-along version of Green Grow My Nadgers-O).
The writing is gloriously nonsensical, with filthy sounding gibberish, interruptions from Kenneth Williams complaining about the script, and Kenneth Horne continuing calmly with scathing putdowns delivered in the politest possible manner as he keeps the show on track despite the anarchy brewing behind him.
The atmosphere of the show is recreated thoughtfully with the stage set up as the BBC studio and a hapless sound engineer (Conrad Segal) bearing the brunt of the casts’ disapproving glares.
During the interval I overheard one older lady saying that she’d sat with her eyes closed for a while as that was how she’d originally experienced the show. But that meant that she’d missed out on the wonderful physicality of the actors. Jonathan Hansler as Hugh Paddick, Eve Winters as Betty Marsden and Colin Elmer as Kenneth Williams are just brilliant, with bizarre body language for each character, extraordinary facial expressions and knowing looks to the audience at each innuendo. Elmer’s cry of mortal agony is a thing of wonder. Julian Howard McDowell captures Hornes’s unflappable deadpan dependable manner and Nick Wymer’s Douglas Smith makes you wish that BBC announcers still spoke like that – a voice like melting chocolate.
This show will delight Round The Horne fans and those new to the material. An evening of silliness and laughter that takes you back in time to have fun with the gruntfuttocks and cordwanglers. Just look after your nadgers.