A Dish of Tea with Dr Johnson (Scarborough)

With director Max Stafford-Clark and Out of Joint one never knows what to expect, except that it will be inventive, individual and humane. A Dish of Tea with Dr Johnson is a witty, warm-hearted entertainment, modest in scope, as suggested by a tour full of one- and two-nighters, not all in theatres. It is totally charming, if unambitious in staging and, at this early stage of the tour, sometimes lacking in precision.

The two actors, Ian Redford and Russell Barr, have joined Stafford-Clark in assembling an ingenious mix of extracts from Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson and Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with the occasional Dictionary definition thrown in, to produce a gentle, but not superficial, saunter through Johnson’s later years. The result is frequently very amusing (with well-loved witticisms and putdowns cleverly woven into the script), but doesn’t downplay the frustrations, contradictions and depressions of being Dr Samuel Johnson.

With a table and two chairs the staging is simplicity itself and the production is happy for the most part to rely on the words, though a brief, but charming, Highland dance brought applause. Ian Redford’s Dr Johnson, complete with Lichfield accent, is delightfully bearish, bringing out the contrasts from elegant epigrams to bullying dismissals, from massive certainty to the pathos of rejection, but in this performance  a number of small fluffs disturbed the Johnsonian flow. Russell Barr is smoothly eager as Boswell and switches with insouciant ease between eight other characters, though many make limited impact beyond a change of accent, George III (what-whatting in the manner now familiar from The Madness of…) being an honourable exception.

A Dish of Tea with Dr Johnson is an intelligent and entertaining way to spend 80 minutes, with its somewhat cavalier approach summed up by the strange case of the dog that wants to be a cat. Apart from Johnson, the only character not played by Russell Barr is Hodge, the great man’s cat, played by Katie, Russell Barr’s dog! Though unconvincingly feline, she steals the show, succeeding after several attempts in getting onto Boswell’s chair, so that he is forced to conduct serious duologues perched on one-half of it. When Huddersfield, Leeds and Richmond audiences get to see A Dish of Tea… late in March, I’m sure it will be sharper. Quite possibly more control will be exercised over Katie’s stage time; that would be a mixed blessing!