Silly George Roper even better on the stage

Press, 28 March 1979, Page 6

Silly George Roper even better on the stage

By HOWARD MCNAUGHTON “George , and Mildred,” by Johnnie Mortimer and Brian Cooke. Directed by Tony Clayton; Theatre Royal. Running time: 8.15 p.m. to 10.15 p.m. It is Saturday afternoon, and the normally placid sexual arena of Hampton Wick is suddenly confounded by the arrival of Mildred’s sister Ethel, escaping from her passionate husband, who soon follows. George’s aversion to Ethel is equalled by Mildred’s interest in her brother-in-law Humphrey (whose attentions are for his secretary); but, after a series of complications, Mildred and Ethel set off on the Ropers’ second honeymoon in France while George is reluctantly cajoled into a furtive night out with Humphrey and some girls. The rest of the farcical action is predictable enough, and the scriptwriters manage

very professionally to capitalise on all rhe comedy and suggestiveness latent in the situation without violating the comic characterisations which are so popular from television. There was such a large audience at the Theatre Royal last night that the upper gallery had to be opened, and there was obviously a very high level of satisfaction. This was undoubtedly due largely to the performance of Brian Murphy (George), who turned out to be even more hilarious than on the screen. Deprived of the intimacy on which all his splendid face work depends, he compensated with a sustained feat of physical clowning that was often so good as to make the dialogue superfluous. In the inevitable concealment and discovery scenes, he proved himself a brilliant and hard-working farceur with a thoroughly professional sense of stage co-

| operation: the script admitI tedlv favours him, but he I allows the rest of the cast its due prominence. Because the play consists of plotted farce rather than run-of-the-mill domestic comedy, Yootha Joyce does : not get the scope for (breakfast-table bitchiness [that we expect from television — especially as her preI tensions and aggressiveness [are outshone by the high ) theatrical manner of Wendy (Blacklock’s Ethel. ! However, she is allowed to ! make a thorough job of I dressing George down after his night with Humphrey, and the finale contains an amusing twist that elevates her stature considerably. Most of the secondary actors present themselves in an unnecessarily heavy manner that suggests seasons in theatres of unpredictable quality. But ultimately the show is George and Mildred’s, and they unquestionably earn their popularity.