Book, lyrics and music by Paul Whitehouse, Jim Sullivan and Chas Hodges
Opera House, Manchester
November 11-23, 2024
(also Sunderland Empire, November 25-30; Venue Cymru, Llandudno, January 20 - 25; Newcastle Theatre Royal, February 10-22; Leeds Grand, February 24-March 1; Blackpool Winter Gardens, April 28-May 3; Sheffield City Hall, May 26-31; Liverpool Empire, June 9-21)
November is when the old chestnuts appear: Boris Johnson’s memoirs; the elderly orange man from Orange County with his promise of going back to the future, and perhaps on a lesser scale, Only Fools and Horses.
From a golden age of British comedy, time has turned brass into gold, which allows the son of the TV sitcom's creator, John Sullivan, to continue making brass with his father’s 1980s inheritance.
With his co-writer, Paul Whitehouse, Sullivan Jr has lovingly recreated dialogue and action from the original scripts. Sadly, the joins tend to show.
The gags are well known to the audience, which responds with glee to the routines: Del in the pub with the moveable bar-gate is milked for all it it's worth. The songs are an addition, and again the joins show. Never mind the quality, feel the width sums up the feel of the action.
Sam Lupton as Del Boy plays the wide-kipper-tie routines to good effect. He could be the original
Trotter through the medium of time travel or, as a real magician, through the lens of memory manipulation. Rodney (Tom Major), is the newbie. This is his first professional engagement and luckily it
doesn’t show; he takes to the role like a duck to water. As the audience can attest, cliches are catching.
Paul Whitehouse is both actor, as Grandad, and co-writer, and sings too; in fact his inclusion is probably the real feature of the show. The demands on the actors, singing, dancing and acting, are extreme, but they deliver. Marlene (Nicola Munns), is particularly good; able to transfer from the brassy wife to the golden-haired Cassandra, Rodney's paramour, in the blink of an eye.
The other feature of the show is how social attitudes have moved on in only 25 years, some of which are not well reflected. Having the black member of the cast sit in darkness so that Del Boy can be surprised by her reappearance, feels like a definite back-to-the-future moment.
But the audience gets value for its money as familiarity, for once, does not breed anything but humour...
More info and tickets here
