Thankfully the play is quite short - only an hour and three-quarters including the interval. There would almost certainly have been more humour in it. Perhaps it would have been better simply to have adapted the Ealing comedy for the stage. The second half is marginally better than the first but on the evening I attended the audience laughed only a handful of times. There's also a clever use of props, with a chair doubling up as a car, a packing case as a boat and a sink plunger as a telephone.īut the script lets the production down. Helen Fownes-Davies has done a fine job with the set which becomes the hold of the sinking ship, a village hall, a cave and other settings from the film as well as Mackenzie's study. It sinks more quickly than the SS Politician, the ship which ran aground off the tiny island of Barra at the start of the tale. But not even actors of the calibre of Richard Shelton (Dr Adam Forsythe in Emmerdale), Karen Drury (Susanna Farnham in Brookside) and Robert Austin can save this show. Most of the cast are highly experienced and very enthusiastic. Croft's production features author Compton Mackenzie, director Sandy Mackendrick, the producer, actress Joan Greenwood, Mackenzie's secretary and his great-nephew assembling in Mackenzie's study to read through the new script. It's true that the screenplay was ripped up and thrown away only a couple of days before the Ealing comedy was shot. Nottingham Playhouse's artistic director Giles Croft came up with the idea of this new play which goes behind the scenes of the film.
That's no fault of the actors - it's totally down to the script which I found leaden, uninspiring and largely unfunny. But Whisky Galore! The Making of a Fillum is a big disappointment. When you take a classic Ealing comedy and put it into a live setting, you'd think the author would have a pretty good chance of raising plenty of laughs. Similarly, a funny film script won't necessarily turn into a funny stage adaptation. It's not automatic that a successful novel can be adapted into a successful play.
0 kommentar(er)
