This wonderfully inventive play about Bolton’s master blaster, Fred Dibnah, is the brainchild of Aelish Michael, whose first major full-length work it is. A play of two halves, the first is achingly funny, the second desperately sad.
Colin Connor, recently an accomplished Friar here in Romeo and Juliet, is simply terrific as the down-to-earth steeplejack who became a television sensation simply being himself - a reluctant demolition man more inclined to preserve mill chimneys than topple them. All his idiosyncrasies are here, even his habit of almost keeling over backwards, like one of his chimneys, when talking. And there’s an unsuspected sensitivity and vulnerability at all times, not just when the decline sets in.
Fred’s third wife is beautifully captured by Michelle Collins. A former magician’s assistant, Sheila’s greatest trick is not to let us know what it is she most loves, his robust personality, his fame - or his money which she lavishes on clothes and cars.
Ne’er-do-well Malc (John McArdle) is convinced it’s the money she’s after, but Fred’s other pals, the dim Keith (Richard Heap) and the faithful Bert (Mike Burnside), are not so sure. It’s a pity we don’t get an opinion from the two observers, both played by Huw Higginson - Isambard Kingdom Brunel, with the ghost of whom Fred communes, or Mr. TV, who follows him around filming him.
Full marks, too, for James Cotterill’s set, Fred’s cluttered workshop, and the way director David Thacker deploys three giant screens to capture in grainy black and white the external action in this superb world premiere.
Production information can change over the run of the show.
Content is copyright © 2012 The Stage Media Company Limited unless otherwise stated.
All RSS feeds are published for personal, non-commercial use. (What’s RSS?)
