'Dad's Army Marches On' theatre review - Nowt2Do.Com: Listings and Reviews for Bristol and Beyond!


	Here’s a really stupid idea. Take Britain’s most enduring sit-com, Dad’s Army, and put it on stage. Stupid idea, stupid boy. Well, it turns out it’s not such a stupid idea. Dad’s Army Marches On is actually the second time it has been done and from the moment that our favourite characters from the Walmington On Sea Home Guard make their entrances we can breathe a sigh of relief and trust that we are in safe hands. Most of the cast members remain the same as in the first Dad’s Army stage outing, with Leslie Grantham playing Private Walker (as Leslie Grantham rather than nodding towards James Beck). It is Grantham who is first to appear, as the spiv, Walker, addressing the audience and setting the scene. We are then treated to four tv shows laced together plus the opening scene to Asleep in the Deep – a quick and clever way to introduce the platoon relationships to anyone who needs reminding. It also gives the theatre audience a chance to get used to the new faces of much-beloved characters. The actors do not attempt impersonations but rather channel the original actors who played the parts, so it’s working on a number of levels. Inevitably we are always making comparisons to the original cast, how could you not, but time and again those comparisons stand up very well. The show has pulled together four of the television episodes; Mum’s Army and Branded, two of them favourite scripts from the writers of the TV show, Jimmy Perry and David Croft and then in the second half Young and Beautiful and The 2½ Feathers. Mum’s Army sees Captain Mainwaring, a terrifically accurate portrayal by Timothy Kightley, fall head over heels in love with Mrs Gray (Sarah Berger). Here Dad’s Army meets Brief Encouter and serves to remind us that not all episodes revolved around Corporal Jones escapades with upturned baths. There is genuine pathos here and the pompous little bank manager is shown in a more human light. Maitland Chandler plays Private Godfrey (beautifully) and in Branded finds himself ostracised from the platoon once they find out that he was a conscientious objector in The Great War. However, pacifist or not it transpires he is the bravest of the lot. I have to confess that the TV episode Keep Young and Beautiful contains one of my favourite scenes so I was a little worried that the stage show would find it hard to pull off. In order to look younger than they are Godfrey, Jones and Frazer make use of the fluids used by Frazer to dress corpses. I need not have fretted; they pulled off the make-up well, with big laughs. Finally, in The 2½ Feathers Corporal Jones is accused of having been a coward. It contains the most ambitious staging of the evening as it plunders a flashback to the Battle of Omdurman in 1898. Funny and sad and much more theatrical in its approach, this for me was the high spot of the show. What is clear is the writing is the star. The Perry and Croft scripts were conjuring up a by-gone age when they were written in the late sixties/seventies so they aren’t peppered with topical references but historical ones. The scripts ploughed the furrow of character comedy rather than relying on gags, get the characters right and the comedy works. Producer Ed O’Driscoll deserves high praise in assembling a cast that works so well.