Review: Charley’s Aunt – People’s Theatre, Newcastle
A nineteenth century play might not immediately spring to mind as your first choice for a comedy night out, but the People’s Theatre’s production of the drawing room farce Charley’s Aunt comes as a breath of fresh, chortle-filled air for Newcastle’s comedy fans.
A farce to rival anything by his more famous contemporary, Oscar Wilde, Brandon Thomas’s play is peppered with ill-timed entrances and exits and switched identities that create layer upon layer of comic missed connections and misunderstandings.
Once the scene is set for this comedy of manners and mayhem the laughs start coming thick and fast, so that by the interval I was left waiting … in anticipation of Act 2.
The female characters are more stereotypes than rounded individuals, but then so are the men, with the most fleshed out being the cross-dressing Lord Fancourt ‘Babbs’ Babberley, skilfully played by Jake Wilson Craw.
His comedic posturing and shrill tones seem at first like a typical pantomime dame, but he steals the show once Babbs’s frustration with the part his friends have allotted him begins to show, driving him to increasingly desperate measures to regain his male persona so that he can have a whiskey and a cigar.
The other cast members throw themselves into their parts, with Ian Willis (as Jack Chesney) and Ricky Shah (as Charley Wykeham) playing strong supporting roles as the upper class friends who initiate the action by inviting their prospective lady-loves to lunch with Charley’s mysterious and elusive aunt.
Phil Hodes is hilariously sycophantic in a finger-nails-down-a-blackboard kind of way as the gold-digging Stephen Spettigue, while Crispin Welby’s long-suffering manservant Brassett provides ironic commentary on the antics of his young masters.
The settings for the play are relatively simple, and the rather prolonged interlude between acts 2 and 3, designed to allow the actors to change the scene-shifters to move the action from garden to drawing room, seems a little unusual.
However, two of the scene-shifters provided unexpected comic relief during this break in the action, when their valiant work in manoeuvring and then re-manoeuvring a particularly tricky-looking piece of set received an impromptu round of applause, which they received with aplomb.
Charley’s Aunt is a great night out, with its direction and hilarious performances setting the bar high for the rest of the season’s comedy at the People’s Theatre.
Date of live review: Tuesday 21 January 2014
Charley’s Aunt runs at The People’s Theatre until Saturday 25th January 2014. Tickets are available on the door, from the theatre’s website, or by calling 0191 265 5020.
