Habeas Corpus: Menier Chocolate Factory

showgirl If it helps, we were out the door by 10.05pm.

Emmannuelle

If it had not been written by Alan Bennett do you think they would have dared to have staged it ?

2 stars from The Times, Standard, Guardian

3 from WOS, BWW, londontheatre.co.uk

4 from the Telegraph

hmmmm ......

What with this outdated tosh and the execrable’Highly Offensive’ Play ‘the Artistic Director of TMCF seems to be making some decidedly strange programming choices of late. If the idea is to give their audience a proper laugh in these troubled times, how about a revival of their first and I think only original musical ‘Paradise Found’?

Well, I haven't seen the play since Sam Mendes' superb revival in the mid-90s at the Donmar, but what I remember is the brilliance of the writing (Mrs. Wicksteed ruefully saying 'My body, lying there wasted, night after night, in the pale moonlight; now I know how the Taj Mahal feels’), lots of good jokes and some very clever plotting. It's interesting to compare two reviews of Peter Hall's 2006 Bath Theatre Royal production (lots of really talented people do want to put the play on, it appears): Billington praises its radical approach to farce, its suggestion that sex is a way of warding off death and he describes it as being 'as if Aristophanes were invested with a sense of human transience.' He says the play deserves to be much better known that it is. Pete Wood in the British Theatre review agrees with most reviewers of this production that it is absurdly dated. It could be an age thing, of course. Paul Taylor in the Independent gives the Marber revival 5 stars!

I thought as play it's very average. Some good observations but nothing that is very satisfying.
My friends did not return after the interval due to the forced medication scene, is this colour blind casting gone wrong?

Yes, this is a bit dated. But then so's Moliere and Lope de Vega even.... whisper it.... Shakespeare!!!

But the reason why this is revived is because Alan Bennett is a modern great, and the burden of proof is not on me to prove this but on you to refute it. So even when we are talking of an early work which does not overtax the intellect, this is still worth a revival. After all, no one begrudges Shakespeare his Falstaff plays?

My take on this is that Bennett, a developing playwright at the time, not only inhabits the genre of bawdy farce but also lampoons it, and that dichotomy is at the heart of this play which - with apologies to Canon Throbbing - is a bit of a curate's egg but which overall provides more laughs than groans. And in the mix there are some preciously wonderful lines which can be up there with vintage Bennett.

One person left at the interval, most of the rest of the audience enjoyed the performance very vocally. Nuff said.

In a week where world events have left us all despairing at man's inhumanity to man, was it right to be enjoying something as frivolous as a farce? Well, absolutely I say! Habeas Corpus was the perfect tonic to forget about the world's ills, if only for a couple of hours. It's the only way of coping in fact; full-on depression the other way lies. Escapism has always been essential at times of war.

It helped that we had taken liberal advantage beforehand of the free alcohol in our hotel's lounge. I can imagine that approaching this 1973 Alan Bennett work in a serious mood, stone-cold sober, might not be rewarding. If, on the other hand, you are prepared to have some fun, it's a real hoot.

I am not surprised at the two-star reviews from certain sections of the press. This tale "from a less enlightened age", as the poster warns, pushes all the wrong buttons, and is all the more delicious for that. Director Marber and the full cast know exactly what they're doing, and it's pitch perfect.

In truth though, there is nothing to offend here. Marber does not even deliver on the title's promise to "show me the bodies": all nudity takes place off stage. Instead, we are confronted by an array of absurd Orton-esque characters, who have in common their desperate need for sexual fulfilment. It's played out as a parable about how all we need is to be loved, in that frighteningly short window between birth and the grave. The latter hangs over proceedings portentously in the form of a coffin, centre stage.

Louise Gold was back last night, this time as Lady Rumpers, script in hand, having had just one hour's rehearsal, we were told. Her performance was glorious; the rest of the cast uniformly excellent. Farce must be one of the hardest genres to pull off successfully (double entendre intended), and no-one misses a beat.

Bennett's script is a joy. I haven't laughed this much in a while; proper belly laughs too, not just chuckles and grins. Matthew Cottle, as the debauched, upskirting man of the cloth, treats us to a few lines delivered as a spot-on impersonation of Mr Bennett, and brings the house down.

Have fun, while you still can, seems to be a very timely message to take home right now.

Four stars.

Act 1: 20:03-20:53
Act 2: 21:11-22:03