Review: David Tennant and Michael Sheen provide light lockdown relief in Staged

I don’t know what was more alarming. David Tennant using the c-word or David Tennant wearing an Alice-band.

David Tennant in Staged

But I think we can excuse both in the pandemic. Even great actors can go lockdown loony, just like you and me (especially you).

Staged features two great actors, Tennant and Michael Sheen, playing themselves. The set-up is their play got cancelled as the world shut down so they’re stuck at home. But the director has an idea: “Let’s do the show right here!”

All we see, more or less, is the stars in split-screen. Presumably they get round to the play eventually (or maybe not) but in last night’s two bite-sized instalments they mainly joshed and teased and wound each other up.

You must have been reminded of The Trip, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon’s travelogue playing themselves, and also Gone Fishing with Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse. These two didn’t - couldn’t - go anywhere so there were no nice locations, and not being comedians the riffing wasn’t quite as funny. But we were treated to small insights into how their front rooms look and larger ones into how actors’ minds, more specifically neuroses, work.

Now and again, their better halves appeared, first Swedish actress Anna Lundberg to correct some detail during a discussion about fascism and to hand Sheen a jumbo glass of red wine. Then Georgia Tennant, also an actress, explained why she wasn’t home-schooling: “I’m finished for the day. There are only so many rainbows I f****** need to make.”

The women haven’t been allowed anywhere near Tennant and Sheen’s lockdown locks. The Welshman’s curls are growing wild. The Scotsman has his big-jessie band.

Staged took a few minutes to warm up and I wondered where it was going but then the thesps’ competitiveness showed itself, Tennant’s child-like drawing of a pineapple being easily trumped by Sheen’s watercolour of that day’s sunrise.

Tennant: “You did not paint that! F*** off!”

Sheen: “Are you angry with me for having a hobby?” The first episode ended with an argument over who should get top billing in the play’s credits, Sheen pointing out that alphabetically it should be him. An aggrieved Tennant couldn’t even win on middle names after checking Wikipedia - “which also says you’re a c***.”

For the second part the pair were listed - together - as Michael Christopher Sheen and David John Tennant. They continued bantering and niggling and you might wonder who’s going to flip out first. Gawping up at the empty skies Sheen is worried that birds are plotting a Hitchcockian takeover. Tennant can’t stop spelling words backwards.

Is any of this real? Staged has a writer’s credit but you imagine there’s some improvisation involved. And the feeling of creeping madness is one we can all share, even if we haven’t been acclaimed for our Hamlets like these two.

Covid and Zoom have combined to offer us sneak peeks into the lives and living spaces of the rich and famous. Sheen and Tennant certainly have comfortable homes but would have us believe they’re not protected from uncomfortable lockdown truths.

We’re all getting bevvied, right? Sheen admitted that he and Lundberg were drinking more than usual, so much so that he’d tried to hide some of his empties in the recycling bin of his 80-year-old neighbour, only she’d rumbled him. Was this real? It didn’t matter. Staged isn’t as side-splitting as The Trip or as sweet as Gone Fishing but will see me through a few more weeks of isolation.

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