Theatre reviews: The Full Monty | The Government Inspector | In the Heart of Darby Park

IF you were looking for a single show to sum up where British popular culture stands today, then you could do little better than grab a ticket for writer Simon Beaufoy’s big, brash, full-on stage version of his hit 1997 film The Full Monty, first seen in Sheffield last month, and now at the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh.

The Full Monty

Edinburgh Festival Theatre

****

The Government Inspector

King’s Theatre, Edinburgh

****

In the Heart of Darby Park, Oran Mor, Glasgow

****

At one level, it’s story is a tragic one: the 1980s tale of six unemployed steel workers suddenly catapulted into a new economic order where instead of selling their labour, men and women are increasingly compelled to sell themselves – their personalities, their souls, even their bodies.

Yet the story comes well wrapped in another striking aspect of post-1980s British culture: our continuing notion, despite all the changes of the last half-century, that the naked human body is still something naughty, to scream and shriek about.

So when handsome divorced dad Gaz and his fat mate Dave begin to talk about forming a team of male strippers to rival The Chippendales – and to outdo them by stripping off completely – the mainly female audience simply goes nuts, roaring and stamping and goading the actors into getting their kit off, without delay. It’s hard to tell whether this is because women really want to see a mixed bunch of guys in the buff, or whether it represents a mass act of ironic revenge for thousands of years of objectification of the female body; but there it is, and it sells tickets by the tens of thousands.

If you add to the mix two other ingredients – the presence of a clutch of stars famous from television shows like Coronation Street, and the sheer skill and briliance of a production team that includes Black Watch choreographer Steven Hoggett, designer Robert Jones and lighting man Tim Lutkin – then you have a piece of popular theatre that generates a huge charge of theatrical excitement, while also making a powerful case for the wit and humanity of millions of people thrown onto the economic scrapheap. And by the end – thanks to fine performances from Kenny Doughty as Gaz, Roger Morlidge as Dave, Simon Rouse as Gerald, and an outstanding Trevor Caddy (on Monday night) as Gaz’s little son Nathan – the audience is empathising fully, through its excitement, with Gaz’s struggle to be a good dad, with Dave’s desperate lack of self-esteem, and with middle-class Gerald’s desperate attempt to conceal his unemployment from his posh wife Linda; in a show that – if it’s not great theatre – is still big, heartfelt and significant, and brilliantly well done.

There’s also plenty of spectacle, and even sharper political comment, in Edinburgh-based Communicado’s 2011 production of Nikolai Gogol’s The Government Inspector, now back in Edinburgh after a successful tour of Wales. The Government Inspector was first performed in St Petersburg in 1836; and it’s therefore slightly alarming that its portrait of small-town municipal chaos in a hierarchical society should remain so instantly recognisable to 21st-century audiences – perhaps more so now, in an age of ruthless top-down public-sector management, than half a century ago.

Recast for its current tour with a mixed company of Welsh and Scottish-based actors, Gerry Mulgrew’s production offers a disconcerting combination of sheer visual and musical brilliance on one hand, and heavy-footed, old-fashioned verbal and physical comedy on the other. On a simple, flexible set by Jessica Brettle, the actors take up their musical instruments at every scene-change, transforming themselves into a superb band and singing combo, belting out deeply satirical versions of Russian folk classics; and now and again, with the help of Sergey Jakovsky’s lighting, Mulgrew conjures up magnificent stage tableaux that seem to express the whole meaning of the play in single brilliantly-lit images of provincial snobbery, sleaze, and absurdity.

For the rest, the show is distinctly variable, with performances slithering around the line between powerful, purposeful satire and lazy comic buffoonery; there’s too much pointless falling over, some overpitched gabbling, and the occasional lapse into sheer tedium. Overall though, this is a vivid, impressive show, with a kind of physical and satirical energy that British theatre too often lacks; and at its best, it features some fine ensemble acting, notably from George Drennan, Barrie Hunter, and Jams Thomas as assorted local buffoons, and from Kate Quinnell as the Governor’s daughter, Marya.

This week’s Play, Pie And Pint offering, In The Heart Of Darby Park by British-Australian playwright Suzie Miller, is a modern murder mystery in three linked monologues; and at first, it looks as if it, too, will have some sharp points to make, in this case about patriarchal violence in the family. The murder victim is a lovely girl of 17 whose single father is a violent psychopath, and whose brother is a heroin addict; and the play builds carefully towards a shocking conclusion which reveals the full extent of the homicidal madness of the father, Anton.

Sadly, though, instead of sticking with her story, Miller decides on a plot-twist that both undermines the structure of the play, and reduces its wider significance, making its violence seem gratuitous. Yet Miller’s tense, powerfully-written text still makes space for fine performances from Lewis Howden as Anton, Stephanie McGregor and Wiliam Ruane; in a stark modern whodunnit sharply directed by Ross McKay, and staged as a co-production with Perth Theatre, where the play will reappear next week.

• The Full Monty and The Government Inspector both run until 30 March. In The Heart Of Darby Park is at Oran Mor, Glasgow, until 30 March, and at Perth Theatre from 2-6 April.