There’s No Place Like a Home

Published Tuesday 10 October 2006 at 18:15 by Ian Barge

Paul Elliott’s ‘capturevating (sic) new comedy’, currently on national tour, in support of Combined Theatrical Charities, has all the plausibility and panache of a Women’s Institute production of Mother Courage. Charity may well begin at home but it is difficult to be charitable about this ham-fisted hybrid of a play, which falls flat on its face somewhere between farce and thriller. Set in a retirement home for actors threatened with closure, it charts a dastardly plot to kidnap and hold to ransom Lord Archer on the dubious assumption that even the fragrant Lady Archer would want to redeem him.

Certainly there is no redemption for this production, which lacks the tight plotting of a genuine thriller or the manic incisiveness of good farce. The script is frankly so laboured and cliche-ridden that the cast resort to stand-up gags, many of which are tired and tasteless, none of which help move the action forward. There is little evidence of any purposeful direction - pace, timing and blocking are vintage masterclass lessons from Michael Green’s Art of Coarse Acting.

To be fair, the cast make frenzied, if fruitless attempts to invest the script with some sort of credibility or comic sophistication. Gorden Kaye gently pilots the plot through its preposterous, sentimental denouement. Tony Adams pirouettes like a demented matador but even they know the game is up. The final impression is that of the crew of a sinking dinghy desperately trying to bale out the doomed ship with tea spoons. A true stinker.