PERFORMANCE & COMEDY

Rondo Theatre, Bath (Wed 18-Thur 19 Jan)

THEATRE This is not the 'Blue Room' in which Nicole Kidman famously got her kit off. No, this is a loose adaptation of a comic short story by Prosper Mérimée, and though it involves a certain amount of ooh-la-la sexy Gallic naughtiness, nobody actually gets nekkid. A couple go off for a dirty weekend, in an era when you had to pretend to be married to do that, and get involved with dubious characters they meet on the train, and again in the hotel, and there is some confusion over whether a murder takes place and whether they will be found guilty of it. With hilarious consequences, etc.

This production by Barefaced Cheek Theatre is a bit of un oeuf du curé, however. Parts of it are excellent: all in all, though, it doesn’t quite hang together. For one thing it can’t decide whether to be a full-scale ’Allo ’Allo attack on those risible Froggies, or whether to be a completely Anglicised version of the story. Some characters are played as English or Welsh, some as cartoon Frenchmen; the recurrent Parisian accordion music jars somewhat with Yorkshire accents at other times.

There’s some nice Goon-ish humour, daft false moustaches, and bedroom farcicals as you would expect, and it romps along at quite a pace. Too much of a pace, unfortunately: the whole thing lasts barely 40 minutes – which might be OK for television, but you can’t really get away with a performance as brief as that in a theatre unless you’re Samuel Beckett. Nice try, but needs more consistency and character and plot development to really work. (John Christopher Wood)

Copyright John Christopher Wood 2011