A (slightly) guilty pleasure of witty, unreconstructed fun courtesy of Alan Bennett and director Patrick Marber
Billing Alan Bennett’s 1973 comedy as "a filthy farce from a less enlightened age" is a canny move. It pretty well pre-empts any cancelling by detractors in 2021, shocked by the fun in that age of trouser-dropping and accidental bosom fondling, typified by the long-running so-called ‘Whitehall farces’ of the 50s and 60s.
What Bennett brought to the mix in the 70s was dazzling verbal comedy, a surreal self-conscious theatricality, some memorable comic earworms in poetry and prose, and a surprisingly sobering sense of mortality behind the exuberantly filthy fun. The title’s legal term means ‘You shall have the body’, but another Latin phrase, ‘memento mori’ – ‘remember you must die’ – associated with paintings including a sinister skull, underlies the action, making the farce rather darker.
The play also evokes the spirit of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. The dramatis personae includes the titled Delia, Lady Rumpers and her nubile daughter Felicity, plus a frustrated randy Vicar, the nominative determinatively named Canon Throbbing.
At the centre of the action though is the household of Dr Arthur Wicksteed, GP practising in genteel Hove, his expansive and physically well-endowed wife Muriel, their wimpy hypochondriac son Dennis, and Connie, Arthur’s spinster sister, who's feisty but flat-chested. They have in common a frustration expressed physically. Connie craves a curvaceous bosom and a chance of sexual satisfaction, love even, before it’s too late, which almost everyone else longs for too, including Arthur’s bitter rival Sir Percy Shorter, appropriately named as he's the somewhat vertically challenged president of the British Medical Association.
Mr Shanks, sales rep and fitter of the mail-order falsies the desperate Connie has sent for, and Purdue, a suicidal patient, complete the line-up, save for Mrs Swab, the cleaning lady, who orchestrates the whole action (a role I was lucky enough to see Bennett himself play in 1974).
In a programme note, director Patrick Marber reveals a love of Sam Mendes’ superb 1996 production and, 10 years ago, reading it "for the first time and falling in love all over again". Marber pays forensic attention to Bennett’s directions for an almost bare stage, where pantomime-like lighting (designer Richard Howell) enhances the theatricality. From the get-go, the cast address the audience, notably Ria Jones’ cleaner-cum-game show compere Mrs Swab or Jasper Britton’s excellent Wicksteed, veering between resignation and desperation. Like Jones, he has a wonderful way with Bennett’s words, especially the verse, which is cleverly and spectacularly enhanced by compose/sound designer Adam Cork’s darkly witty music.
Britton is well matched by Catherine Russell’s Muriel, apparently confident, but actually frustrated by neglect. Kirsty Besterman’s Connie appealingly transits from sad sack to ‘out there’ sex symbol. Thomas Josling’s Dennis is wonderfully weedy and Matthew Cottle’s Canon Throbbing, longing to lose his virginity, is appropriately inappropriate. Caroline Langrishe’s Lady Rumpers relishes the imperiousness hiding her sexual hunger, and Katie Bernstein’s delicious Felicity hides her burgeoning figure as she seeks the respectability of marriage. Dan Starkey’s Sir Percy has fun keeping his dignity as he loses his trousers, as does Abdul Salis’s Mr Shanks, mistaking the real things for the fakes. And Kelvin O’Mard’s Purdue makes the most of ‘hanging around’.
It won’t appeal to all audiences, but it certainly did to the packed and appreciative house the night I got to share the unreconstructed fun.
By Judi Herman
Photos by Manuel Harlan
Habeas Corpus runs until Saturday 26 February. 8pm (Tue-Sat), 3.30pm (Sat & Sun only). £40-£47.40, £37.50 concs. Menier Chocolate Factory, SE1 1RU. www.menierchocolatefactory.com