King’s Theatre, Glasgow
Three Stars
In an increasingly
apocalyptic looking world, how far do comedic provocateurs go in pointing out
the inherent ridiculousness of their self-serving masters? As with most things,
in terms of so-called leaders more resembling grotesque caricatures than actual
functioning politicians, we have been here before. This is something Ian Hislop
and Nick Newman’s timely dramatic sketch-book of the trials of nineteenth
century bookseller and pamphleteer William Hone makes abundantly clear.
One minute, Hone and his
cartoonist comrade George Cruikshank are hustling their national lampoon of the
gluttonous Prince Regent and his well-upholstered cronies to the masses. The
next, Hone is hauled before the courts to answer charges of blasphemy, not
once, not twice, but a suitably biblical three times in as many days. Of
course, it’s a massive stitch-up designed to wear Hone out, but even the
establishment’s well-worn tactic of attrition blows up in their faces like the whiffiest
of Hone’s ever-rumbling raspberries.
Caroline Leslie’s
Trademark Touring and Watermill Theatre production goes with the flow of Hislop
and Newman’s historical confection. The clock at the centre of Dora
Schweitzer’s wood-panelled courtroom set whizzes back and forth from the cut
and thrust of each trial to the roots of each alleged libel, with detours into
the buffoonish Prince Regent’s chambers en route.
When Joseph Prowen steps
up to plead his case, he looks and sounds every inch a hero of our times, even
as he pre-dates similarly absurdist legal actions from the 1960s Oz magazine
trial to Hislop’s own capers in the dock as editor of Private Eye.
While urgency may be
lacking at points, it more than makes up for it in the comic romp stakes, as
Jeremy Lloyd’s Prince Regent plays kiss-chase with his mistresses. By the end,
Hone might have remained uncompromising to the last, but it is Cruikshank who sold
out to the king’s shilling. Such is the way of things as professional satirists
bite the hand that feeds them, already a part of the class they so cuttingly
critique.
The Herald, February 12th 2019
Ends
Comments