Skip to main content

The Ladykillers

Pitlochry Festival Theatre
Four stars
The dramatic and musical cacophony that dovetails the two acts of
Graham Linehan's audacious adaptation of William Rose's classic Ealing
comedy speaks volumes about the post World War Two little Britain
occupied by the disparate gang of get-rich-quick villains at the play's
heart. By posing as a string quartet, the charming Professor Marcus and
his coterie of crooks made up of a cross-dressing major, a pill-popping
teddy-boy, a muscle-headed sidekick and a European psychopath may
appear respectable in the eyes of Marcus' new land-lady, Mrs
Wilberforce. Yet, as with the revolving set that allows the audience in
to Mrs Wilberforce's crumbling King's Cross pile in Richard Baron's
slickly realised revival, it's easy to see beyond the polite facade
towards something messier and more complex.

While Mrs Wilberforce is spotting Nazi spies in the newsagent, the
dog-eat-dog aspirations of Marcus and co points to a crueller future
beyond the never-had-it-so-good years to come. Other than Marcus'
declaration to Mrs Wilberforce when she becomes an accidental
accomplice to the crime that “We're all in this together,” this is
never overplayed in Baron's exquisitely realised affair.  As the last
gasps of old orders seem to triumph even as they're falling apart,
Linehan's version doesn't put a bomb under Rose's original screenplay,
exactly, but you know there's one lurking undiscovered in the long
grass somewhere.

Granville Sexton mines an ambivalent vein of malevolence and
ridiculousness as Marcus, with Sally Grace's Mrs Wilberforce the
trusting face of old-school decency who gets lucky despite herself. If
these two are two sides of the same antique coin, the end result is a
moral victory which these days looks like the most whimsical of wishful
thinking.

The Herald, November 3rd 2014
ends

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) ...

Edinburgh Rocks – The Capital's Music Scene in the 1950s and Early 1960s

Edinburgh has always been a vintage city. Yet, for youngsters growing up in the shadow of World War Two as well as a pervading air of tight-lipped Calvinism, they were dreich times indeed. The founding of the Edinburgh International Festival in 1947 and the subsequent Fringe it spawned may have livened up the city for a couple of weeks in August as long as you were fans of theatre, opera and classical music, but the pubs still shut early, and on Sundays weren't open at all. But Edinburgh too has always had a flipside beyond such official channels, and, in a twitch-hipped expression of the sort of cultural duality Robert Louis Stevenson recognised in his novel, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, a vibrant dance-hall scene grew up across the city. Audiences flocked to emporiums such as the Cavendish in Tollcross, the Eldorado in Leith, The Plaza in Morningside and, most glamorous of all due to its revolving stage, the Palais in Fountainbridge. Here the likes of Joe Loss and Ted Heath broug...

Big Gold Dreams – A Story of Scottish Independent Music 1977-1989

Disc 1 1. THE REZILLOS (My Baby Does) Good Sculptures (12/77)  2. THE EXILE Hooked On You (8/77) 3. DRIVE Jerkin’ (8/77) 4. VALVES Robot Love (9/77) 5. P.V.C. 2 Put You In The Picture (10/77) 6. JOHNNY & THE SELF ABUSERS Dead Vandals (11/77) 7. BEE BEE CEE You Gotta Know Girl (11/77) 8. SUBS Gimme Your Heart (2/78) 9. SKIDS Reasons (No Bad NB 1, 4/78) 10. FINGERPRINTZ Dancing With Myself (1/79)  11. THE ZIPS Take Me Down (4/79) 12. ANOTHER PRETTY FACE All The Boys Love Carrie (5/79)  13. VISITORS Electric Heat (5/79) 14. JOLT See Saw (6/79) 15. SIMPLE MINDS Chelsea Girl (6/79) 16. SHAKE Culture Shock (7/79) 17. HEADBOYS The Shape Of Things To Come (7/79) 18. FIRE EXIT Time Wall (8/79) 19. FREEZE Paranoia (9/79) 20. FAKES Sylvia Clarke (9/79) 21. TPI She’s Too Clever For Me (10/79) 22. FUN 4 Singing In The Showers (11/79) 23. FLOWERS Confessions (12/79) 24. TV21 Playing With Fire (4/80) 25. ALEX FERGUSSON Stay With Me Tonight (1980) ...