September 21, 2008
A rare opportunity to see a British cultural phenomenon on stage. ‘Allo ‘Allo recently gained a kind of spurious stardom with the young because it was mentioned in Catherine Tate’s celebrated confrontation between Lauren and the French Teacher (“Miss – was you in ‘Allo ‘Allo?... say ‘Good Moaning, Miss”) – however the audience last night was very noticeably in the more elderly part of the spectrum. My proto-teen companion confessed herself baffled by the saucy seaside postcard innuendo and broad physical pratfalls that so delighted the rest of the audience, and as she wasn’t born when the series was being aired on tv, couldn’t understand why some characters kept repeating the same lines over and over. The generational cultural difference was in short huge; seen through her eyes, this was a monstrous dinosaur of a show, not at all funny and in appalling taste; seen through the eyes of the devotees around us, it was the last word in hilarious, charming, and comfortable entertainment. I myself was not an avid fan of the tv series, but the adventures of the hapless René, constantly juggling the demands of his wife, his waitresses, the Germans wanting to conceal or discover the hidden Madonna with the Big Boobies by Von Clump, the Resistance wanting to hide British airmen in his café and assassinate Hitler, all slipped down with a comfortable nostalgic familiarity. It does recall the tv of one’s childhood – nursery fare – you wouldn’t want it every day but once in a while it’s interesting and fun.
Jeffrey Holland (of Hi-de-Hi fame) worked valiantly at filling René’s trousers, but alas, Gordon Kaye is in fact inimitable – where was he when we needed him? The only stalwart of the original cast to make it into this production was the astonishing Vicki Michelle, looking exactly the same as when the tv series finished in 1992 – she must have a grisly portrait in her attic, we surmised. Everyone else was perfectly splendid in impersonating their tv counterparts – a special mention for my favourite character, Officer Crabtree, the British agent posing as a French policemen who famously mangled all his vowels so that he was all but incomprehensible – here played delightfully by Matt Jamie.
The big news is that the tv series has just been sold to Germany and will air there for the first time this Autumn. What on earth will they make of its endless double entendres and very gentle satire? If you’re an anthropologist or a cultural historian, or you’re old enough to recall the original with affection, then I would recommend this excellent production of what is now a cultural curiosity. But be quick, as Saturday’s show is nearly sold out.
Jeffrey Holland (of Hi-de-Hi fame) worked valiantly at filling René’s trousers, but alas, Gordon Kaye is in fact inimitable – where was he when we needed him? The only stalwart of the original cast to make it into this production was the astonishing Vicki Michelle, looking exactly the same as when the tv series finished in 1992 – she must have a grisly portrait in her attic, we surmised. Everyone else was perfectly splendid in impersonating their tv counterparts – a special mention for my favourite character, Officer Crabtree, the British agent posing as a French policemen who famously mangled all his vowels so that he was all but incomprehensible – here played delightfully by Matt Jamie.
The big news is that the tv series has just been sold to Germany and will air there for the first time this Autumn. What on earth will they make of its endless double entendres and very gentle satire? If you’re an anthropologist or a cultural historian, or you’re old enough to recall the original with affection, then I would recommend this excellent production of what is now a cultural curiosity. But be quick, as Saturday’s show is nearly sold out.