Bennet Revived – different shocks from 1973
Just back from Habeas Corpus at the Menier, Patrick Marber’s revival of Alan Bennett’s 1973 farce.
This play, which leans on traditions from Whitehall Farces, from Commedia dell'arte (in its stock characters – even if with back stories and hinterlands from a different tradition) from Restoration Comedy (its naming conventions) and even Plautus (with a knowing slave/ servant) takes the basic innocence of Brian Rix and adds in the knowing sexuality of Joe Orton.
This is a play very much of its time, and Marber is true to this. Unlike an Orton play, however, Bennett cannot stop himself from entertaining rather than politicking – so the jokes are there because they are jokes – and many are funny even where some may have become difficult to accept by the chattering classes.
What shocks (maybe) now wasn’t planned by Bennett to shock, or at least not in that way. The Permissive Society is for fun, not triggering. A good cast – headed by Jasper Britton whom we last saw on stage (in Southwark Cathedral) as Becket in Murder in the Cathedral – a very different part.
The set is without furniture (apart from a coffin – don’t ask) and doors – so not a conventional farce setting (as it wasn’t in 1973). It sometimes lacks a little pace (which farces need) but then it includes some thoughts on death and transience which farces don’t expect. The play requires a lot of 4th wall breaking, but sometimes the players are a little arch with it.
But it’s definitely worth seeing. And it’s definitely enjoyable, even where modern sensibilities might now see it as verging on the curate’s egg.