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Round the Horne... revisited - Tour.
Writers - Barry took, Marty Feldman, Brian Cooke & Johnnie Mortimer.
Stage Adapter - Brian Cooke.
Director - Michael Kingsbury.
Designer - Liz Cooke.
Lighting Designer - Tony Simpson.
Original Music and Sound Designer - Rod Anderson.
Cast - here .
Venue - Theatre Royal, 282 Hope Street Glasgow .www.theatreroyalglasgow.com
0141 332 9000
Dates - 17 - 19 March at 7:30pm Sat Mat at 2:30pm.
2005 Tour Dates and Times - here .
Seen to review at Theatre Royal, Glasgow on 17 March 2005..
Reviewer - Jay Dee.
No effort to visually engage.
I was a Radio 4 child. For some reason, the radios in my childhood homes
never strayed from the station. The implications of this for my adult
life are far reaching indeed; the most unfortunate outcome being a sad
obsession with the doings of some farmers in a place called Ambridge.
I can give you chapter and verse on Women's Hour, PM, The Today Programme
and even Moneybox Live (God Help me!). So I was jolly excited to be sent
along to review the touring production of Round the Horne, a theatrical
version of the sixties radio show, which uses the original scripts as
it's source material.
Unfortunately, unlike other radio inspired productions, Round the Horne
fails to survive the transition to a visual medium. I really wanted to
like it but I knew from about 10 minutes in that I just wasn't going to.
The problem is mainly that the production relies far too heavily on the
familiarity of the audience with the material and doesn't make any effort
to make it visually engaging. The set is a BBC Studio, the costumes bland
50's suits and the lighting generally dim and far too focussed on
individual performers. The audience gets no sense of the tension and adrenalin
involved in a live radio broadcast - the performances are too polished.
Audiences love a backstage glimpse and this is what this show seems to
offer. However, every actor knows exactly when to stand up,
no-one drops their script and every (taped) sound effect is perfectly
on cue.
Sadly, even the scripts themselves feel dated and flimsy. Perhaps they
only work aurally - the listener is forced to imagine their own visual
landscape - and the jokes sometimes teeter on the edge of offensive.
Round the Horne is a well intentioned attempt to translate a massive popular
radio hit to the stage that just doesn't work. It is too gentle, too uniform
in style and just not very funny.
© Jay Dee 17 March 2005 - Published on EdinburghGuide.com
Cast:Kenneth Horne - Stephen Critchlow, Douglas
Smith - Oliver Beamish, Kenneth Williams - Stephen Matthews, Hugh Paddick
- David Rumelle, Betty Marsden - Flicity Duncan, Sound Effects Man / Understudy
- C P Hallam, Sound Effects Woman / Understudy - Courtney King.
2005 Tour Details of Round The Horne....
Tour begins
Details here shortly.
Tour ends.
Theatre Editor, Thelma Good's e-mail is
thelma@edinburghguide.com
Although every effort has been taken to ensure the accuracy of the
information presented in these pages, no responsibility can be accepted
for any errors or omissions.
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