DEAD FUNNY
Vaudeville Theatre, London WC2
Opened 3 November, 2016
****

I have known for some years that Terry Johnson is a talented director, particularly of dark and clever comedies. However, I had never before realised quite how precise and gifted he is. In his revival of Dead Funny he can, and regularly does, turn the course of events or the mood of a scene right around, pivoting on the merest inflection or the most fleeting pause.

It helps, of course, that he knows the play in such detail. After all, he wrote it, in 1994, and set it a couple of years earlier in the few days when comedians Benny Hill and Frankie Howerd both died. Fan group the Dead Funny Society hold a memorial party for Hill, only to find that the derisory turnout of five consists of two couples whose marriages are tested to the very point of destruction and a middle-aged man whose coming-out declaration in the midst of everything else seems utterly insignificant. The play enjoyed huge success at the time but has been neglected as regards revivals. In Johnson’s own production, though, it stands revealed as every bit as enjoyable-yet-discomfiting as the most mordant mid-period Alan Ayckbourn work.

He also has a doozy of a cast. Katherine Parkinson is one of Britain’s finest purveyors of deadpan sarcasm. As the comedy dissident Ellie, she drips corrosive, frustrated dissatisfaction from every pore, and the one formal joke she tells is in such bad taste yet so perfectly delivered that we blush for shame even as we hoot. Rufus Jones as her husband, who takes Norman Wisdom more seriously than his marriage, is almost as accomplished as Parkinson, although his long suit is a kind of banal bombast. Ralf Little’s speciality is being amiably half a step behind, and Emily Berrington simply needs to take herself a little too seriously as the evening disintegrates around her, culminating in an almost entirely unforced food fight complete with classic custard-pie routines. Steve Pemberton is anything but a fifth wheel, beginning in major-key camp then gradually delving deeper as the tension mounts.

Johnson orchestrates matters into an evening of exquisitely agonising, embarrassing beauty. Thank heaven such a playwright and such a director found each other, conveniently in the same body.

Written for the Financial Times.

Copyright © Ian Shuttleworth; all rights reserved.

Return to index of reviews for the year 2016

Return to master reviews index

Return to main theatre page

Return to Shutters homepage