Johnson and Boswell - Late but Live

Published Friday 28 March 2008 at 16:05 by Thom Dibdin

Convivial and sardonic by turns, Miles Jupp and Simon Munnery take Stewart Lee’s well-judged script and proceed to deliver a delicious hour of fun.

Combining all manner of stand-up, sketch and character-based comedies, this is costume drama with a big comedy boot up the bum.

Jupp is gently obsequious as James Boswell, the 18th century biographer of Samuel Johnson. Full of his own self-importance, he makes all manner of claims concerning his success in bringing Johnson back to life for the show - which is a signing tour for the new combined edition of Boswell’s The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Johnson’s A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland.

In Johnson, Munnery creates a character who is much more celebratory and full of himself. Under goading from Boswell, he applies his famed wit in caustic and inflammatory Anglophile comments about Scotland in general and Glasgow in particular. Comments which will, no doubt, change to fit the venues of the tour.

Literary comedy is introduced with a recreation of the pair’s voyage to Skye. Boswell hands around buckets of sea wrack for the audience to throw on to stage to help get him into the moment as he waxes bombastic about the dangers of their stormy journey. Johnson’s recollections are rather more succinct.

It’s not all egos, however. The pair play off musician Neil Maclure, who provides a solid underpinning of the comedy with music hall clatters on the drums and surprisingly eloquent comments from the pipes. Mia Flodquist’s clever costumes provide their own comic moments.