Those Magnificent Men

Synopsis

Extra, extra! Read all about it! £10,000 prize for the first ever non-stop transatlantic flight! By any standards, it’s a classic tale of plucky British pioneers - Captain John Alcock, dashing WW1 fighter pilot, and Lieutenant Arthur Whittam Brown, navigational genius with a gammy leg, huddled together against the elements in the tiny cockpit of their converted Vickers Vimy biplane, made almost entirely of wood and canvas - talk about winging it! Now critically-acclaimed comedy writing duo, Brian Mitchell & Joseph Nixon, have turned the story of the race to conquer the skies over the Atlantic into a fast and furious comic tour-de-force. Thrill to the sheer adventuring spirit of our unlikely heroes, marvel at their daredevil aerial antics, and wonder at how the whole bally thing is told with just two actors and a crate full of funny props.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 8 February 2010

There’s a whole other world out there of small, natty, funny little touring shows playing arts centres and village halls round the country.

It seems doubly appropriate, therefore, that the resourceful East Midlands touring company, New Perspectives, should launch a new flight model about the great pioneering double act of Alcock and Brown.

The title conjures the 1966 British movie of magnificoes and their flying machines, and that’s fair enough, but comedy writers Brian Mitchell and Joseph Nixon refer more directly to a rich mock patriotic seam of theatre shows about Bulldog Drummond, Biggles and the Dambusters.

This is a world away from the melancholic meditations in Saint-Exupery’s great story Vol de nuit or the beautiful Charles Lindbergh opera by Brecht and Kurt Weill that landed at the Edinburgh Festival a few years ago.

Here we have more paradoxically earthbound knockabout character comedy with engaging performances...

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