Saw today's matinee, and did not get on with this show personally.
Malcolm Sinclair skillfully playing Uncle Monty for laughs, and the band rocking out on stage, were my highlights.
However, Robert Sheehan's Withnail did not land for me, despite the fact I know him to be a marvellous stage actor from "The Playboy of the Western World" (funny and affecting) and "The War of the Roses" (diabolical and thrilling).
Some spoilers follow. . .
Here Sheehan feels all at sea, with his performance a strained echo of Bill Murray's outrageous Venkman in Ghostbusters, a depiction of a man so self-absorbed that he doesn't care about anything.
But where Murray's performance feels heroically rebellious, Sheehan's performance is constrained by his affected English accent and also constrained by the fact that he SHOULD care, because Withnail absolutely DOES want to be a great successful actor and absolutely DOES feel the loneliness of Marwood potentially abandoning him. Unlike Venkman, Withnail is a layered, complex, ultimately tragic character and in this show we feel none of that.
For me, and I hate to say it, it all comes down to the mystery of comedy specialist, Sean Foley, who is just so damn hit and miss.
On the one hand, "Ben Hur," "The Painkiller," and "Upstart Crow" (the latter most of all) were brilliantly pitched laugh riots.
But somehow, in "The Miser," Foley squandered Griff Rhys Jones, "The Crown Jewels" just did not work, and "The Man in the White Suit" was a bit of a damp squib.
"Spitting Image," "I Can't Sing," "Perfect Nonsense" and "The Ladykillers" were all in the good but not great category, for me, with great laughs sitting side by side with longueurs.
This show is in the unfunny category for me, with Sheehan directed to be at odds with essence of the material. His comic antics are too restrained to be heroic Bill Murray IDGAF territory, and too detached for anything emotional whatsoever to land.
Adonis Sidique is good, genuinely lost emotionally and humorously stumbling through his life, but this is a double act, and since Sheehan is neither a recognisable human being nor a raucous comedy bull, its impossible for either emotional or comic chemistry to land.
And like I said, Sheehan has impressed me immensely previously, so if he's at sea, Sean Foley left him drowning.
It may be that there was nothing Foley could do to make this work.
It may be that Foley has relied on working with others to make his best works (working with Branagh in "The Painkillers," or the entire experienced expert comedy cast in the hilarious laugh-a-minute "Upstart Crow," for example), and that Foley just didn't have expert comedians to work with to mine laughs out of this.
It may be that Foley is too comic to adapt to Robinson's plaintive existential sensibilities, and by going to war with the script, instead of working with it, the sum could not add up from the parts.
Whatever is going on here, this is just not funny enough, nor is it existential and melancholy enough, and it just doesn't work for me.
Thank goodness for Malcolm Sinclair, who gets laughs out of Monty's literary affectations, his romantic aspirations, and makes his every appearance a breath of fresh comic air.
And thank goodness for the rock and roll band, singing "Whiter Shade of Pale" and whatnot.
For me, this is a 2 and a half stars disappointment.
In light of the above, fingers crossed for Dr. Strangelove. If collaboration with an experienced comedian is what Foley needs to make magic, then let's hope Steve Coogan and Foley form a dream team.
