{"id":1988,"date":"2020-04-02T12:37:08","date_gmt":"2020-04-02T11:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=1988"},"modified":"2020-04-02T12:38:54","modified_gmt":"2020-04-02T11:38:54","slug":"they-dont-trust-me-with-cheese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2020\/04\/they-dont-trust-me-with-cheese.html","title":{"rendered":"They don’t trust me with cheese"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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‘The man next to us is honking like a seal,’ whispered my friend Mel at the interval of One Man, Two Guvnors<\/em>. It was the press night of the National Theatre production, back in 2011, and we’d gone along hoping for a bit of a chortle, I guess. We didn’t know we’d be part of an audience convulsed with laughter. And the man sitting beside us really was honking like a seal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tonight the National Theatre<\/a> will stream their film of the show (available on YouTube for a week afterwards), and I’ve just found the review I wrote for Plays International<\/a><\/em>. I’m grinning just remembering Daniel Rigby’s daft-as actor and the beatifically dim Oliver Chris. Hope you enjoy it too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Man, Two Guvnors <\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The National Theatre\u2019s uproarious new hit takes an\n18th-century comedy by Goldoni on a day trip to Brighton, crams a kiss-me-quick\nhat on its head, gooses it and gives ita spin on the dodgems. Goldoni seems to\nenjoy himself: I certainly did. And the man next to me was honking like a seal.\nLike a seal, I tell you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richard Bean\u2019s text transposes A Servant of Two Masters<\/em> from Enlightenment Venice to Brighton in 1963. Everything makes enough sense when you\u2019re watching, but defies tidy synopsis. Suffice it to say that Francis Henshall (James Corden), desperate for gainful employment and a square meal, takes not one but two jobs as a minder. His bosses are a pocket-sized gangster and a posh bloke: little does he know that the gangster is a girl posing as her nasty, dead twin brother; and that the posho is the girl\u2019s fianc\u00e9e and brother\u2019s killer. All clear? Good-oh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Script and design (high-windows and foreshortened\nperspectives by Mark Thompson) nod nicely to the play\u2019s commedia heritage. Like\nthe classic Truffaldino, Francis is driven not by love or honour, but by his\nrumbling belly. \u201cI can\u2019t stop thinking about chips,\u201d he says plaintively, and\ngreed keeps threatening to derail his schemes. More tellingly, a grand\ntradition of British comedy runs through the show like the motto in a stick of\nrock \u2013 crude, violent and beguilingly innocent. There\u2019s everything from saucy\npostcard humour to Victoria Wood. Musical numbers too, in front of an orangeade\ncurtain, involving a skiffle band and the entire cast (the ladies form a sultry\nclose-harmony trio; Daniel Rigby\u2019s bizarre percussion on his own bare chest is\na winning party trick).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nicholas Hytner\u2019s production bounces from guffaw to guffaw.\nBean not only adds lashings of smut, but his best gambit is the non sequiteur.\nLines run very fast, smack into a wall. I\u2019m not sure why, but they\u2019re hysterical\nnuggets of nonsense. \u2018They don\u2019t trust me with cheese,\u2019 for example. Or \u2018She\u2019s\nunsullied by education, like a new bucket.\u2019 The very best lines go to the\nwonderful Oliver Chris as posh Stanley Stubbers \u2013 tall as an oak, thick as a\nplank, wearing the beatific grin of a slightly dim camel. He says things like\n\u2018Wrap his nuts in bacon and send him to nurse,\u2019 or \u2018First names are for girls \u2013\nand Norwegians,\u2019 which even as I type make me giggle like a loon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As well as Chris, a fine cast includes jaw-jutting Jemima\nRooper as the disguised twin, Suzie Toase as a proto-feminist in a very tight\nsweater, and the sublime Daniel Rigby as a would-be thespian doing fiercely\ninterpretive dance \u2013 the actor as bellowing numpty. At the play\u2019s giddy centre\nis James Corden as Francis. Last seen on the South Bank as one of Alan\nBennett\u2019s history boys, he\u2019s since carved out a starry career in telly comedy.\nBack on stage, he brings a nimble, improvisatory charm to the play. He\u2019s a dab\nhand with props, though, I\u2019ve sent quite a few friends to see this show\n(they\u2019ve all loved it. Even my parents, who are a tough crowd), and can confirm\nthat some apparently spontaneous banter and antics are actually set in stone. I\u2019m\nassuming he really does catch peanuts in his mouth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lines are good, the running gags (Australia, the question of identicality in twins) are lovely, the slapstick (courtesy of associate director Cal McCrystal) is terrific. Corden has\u00a0 a full knock-down fight with himself; Rigby perfects an ever more peculiar thespian stance; and there\u2019s a delirious catering scene involving an antiquated waiter (a heroic Tom Edden), a cricket bat, a fire extinguisher and, ahem, a member of the audience. Everything is delivered with tremendous verve. Given the rhapsodic reception, the play will soon transfer to the Adelphi Theatre. I don\u2019t know if prime credit should go to Bean, Hytner, Corden or Goldoni \u2013 but whichever it is, just wrap his nuts in bacon, would you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo of James Corden by Johan Persson<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘The man next to us is honking like a seal,’ whispered my friend Mel at the interval of One Man, Two Guvnors. It was the press night of the National Theatre production, back in 2011, and we’d gone along hoping for a bit of a chortle, I guess. We didn’t know we’d be part of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1989,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[760,758,762,65,759,761,765,763,764,34],"class_list":{"0":"post-1988","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-daniel-rigby","9":"tag-james-corden","10":"tag-jemima-rooper","11":"tag-national-theatre","12":"tag-nicholas-hytner","13":"tag-oliver-chris","14":"tag-one-man-two-guvnors","15":"tag-richard-bean","16":"tag-streaming","17":"tag-theatre","18":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1988"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1991,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1988\/revisions\/1991"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}