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OUT OF ORDER by Ray Cooney 10 November to 3 December 1994 Performed under the original title WHOSE WIFE IS IT ANYWAY? with the Playwright's permission. Directed by Simone de Haas Cast Review Yes Minister Meets Fawlty Towers Andrea Baldwin - Time Off - 23 November 1994 "Government Minister and Opposition Secretary In Sex Orgy With Dead Body!" That's the headline Richard Willey doesn't want to see - and, more to the point, doesn't want his boss Margaret Thatcher to see - but it's what the tabloids will howl across London if he doesn't come up with a plan. Arriving at the Westminster Hotel for a naughty evening with Jane Worthington, a secretary employed by the Leader of the Opposition, he has the misfortune to discover the dead body of an intruder. The best plan seems to be to have the body discovered in another suite, quite innocently, by Richard's parliamentary private secretary George Pigden, as soon as Richard is safely back at the House of Commons where he is long overdue for an all-night debate. But this seemingly simple course of action is complicated from the start by the need to persuade the morally scrupulous and naturally timid George, hoodwink the hotel manager, bully the maid, and either avoid or buy off the elderly waiter. Whose Wife Is It Anyway? is farce, pure and simple. Given a plausible initial situation, it takes a set of correct upper-class English characters and embroils them gradually in their own ingenuity. They really make no single decision that would be called ridiculous; the ridiculous overtakes them implacably, inevitably, like a semi-trailer gaining on the freeway. One of the delights of the play is watching the polite veneers crack and all but shatter, as each character gives way under pressure to his or her real feelings and basic instincts. Normally I am no great fan of the "comedy of things going wrong", but this production is so deliciously smooth, the set so perfect and the actors so alive with the silly mischief of the piece, that it quite won my heart. John Grey plays Richard with just the right touch of oiliness. Jerry Lowley's performance as the hotel manager sums up the centuries-old relationship between the English ruling-class and it's "upper servants". The female characters don't necessarily give Vanessa Wells (Jane), Jan Huggett (The Maid), or Helen Royle (Gladys) much to work with - nobody said this was politically correct comedy; far from it - but it is comic timing, not depth of character, that the play depends on, and all the actors deliver the goods in fine style. Beverley Wood as Richard's wife Pamela draws all eyes. Keith Daly as the body is beautifully dead. The night I attended, the audience consisted mainly of the staff from a hotel, and I was struck by their warm reaction to the production. I suspect a key to its appeal is that, right from the opening moments, it has a powerful televisual quality. We feel very familiar with the genre, if not the characters themselves; we could almost be sitting in our own lounge-room. This quality need not horrify the theatre buff; farce, after all, began in the theatre, and the immediacy and shared experience are not lost because the material has become identified with a different medium. For people with limited theatre experience, though, this might well be a play of which enjoyment is guaranteed. It's Yes Minister meets Fawlty Towers - no deep thing, but a lot of fun. |
