Anyone vaguely cognisant about comedy over the last 50 years will have known what an impact these two had on its landscape. The Peter Cook film Not Only…But Always at Christmas was another testament to his ”tortured genius”. This production, however, is pulling focus round slightly more to Dudley Moore, showing him to be a determined and opportunistic soul, capable of as much determination and skylarking as Cook. It maintains the view that he didn’t have the wit of Cook but he did have clowning skills to give him an equal level of attention. Not to mention the fact that his piano skills were outstanding, but I digress.
Sitting in a full to overflowing room, I am forced to have an extreme view of the stage from behind a pillar. It strangely adds to the staging as it splits the stage perfectly between the interview seats and the action in dressing rooms, bars and at pianos. The cast brings on their own props and makes use of minimal set to change location swiftly. The costume also is minimal and uniform (black tie, white shirt, black suit). So, simple and uniform. This also spills over in to the acting, which is uniformly good.
Kevin Bishop’s Moore is fun loving, put upon (mainly by Cook) and very well observed, with facial ticks and accent changes of the highest calibre. To complement him both Scott Handy and Alexander Kirk (Peter Cook and Interviewer Tony Ferguson) are marvellous. Handy has a sly, quiet way about playing Cook, which makes his barbed witticisms even more amusing. Kirk also has his bon homme persona off to a tee as he struggles through the interview with interruptions and back biting from his two guests. Finally, not content with just being Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller, Fergus Craig and Colin Hoult take on a myriad of different roles to great effect.
There is nothing overly new for the Cook and Moore buff in this apart from it’s view of Moore, however as an introduction or a celebration it displays very solid, uncluttered writing, which doesn’t dwell too much on the negative. Chris Bartlett and Nick Awde (I’m trying not to sound patronising here) have done a good job and Come Again is well worth seeing.
4/5
Peter Rates
