Men Behaving Badly: The Play at the Barn Theatre – review

What a slew of “historic” sitcoms reworked for the theatre (sitplays?) we’ve had recently. Some – The Good Life; Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em – had relatively little to blush about in terms of 21^st-century mores. Others – Fawlty Towers, perhaps – mocked age and foreignness (not to mention front-of-house hospitality), but in a way so side-splitting, Ofcom could sit back and relax with a cuppa (dairy, not oat).

When it comes to Men Behaving Badly, in an age where even a nod to masculinity might merit the advice, “Keep your bargepole well away from social media”, how do you update this one? In PC-fashion? Men Drinking Heineken 0.0%? Or maybe double-down with Men Behaving Really Badly (an ex-palace-dweller and Labour peer forced into a flatshare in Ealing, for example)?

It’s a question writer Simon Nye asked himself as he embarked on this incarnation for the stage. His, of course, was a ’90s sitcom, when New Man was a relative embryo, though sexually mature enough to muse on “Top Five Girl Singers’ Arses”. Nye’s solution is a kind of halfway house: former flatmates Gary and Tony (hobbies: beer, TV and chasing women) are about to welcome in the new millennium. Only Gary (Ross Carswell) is now dad to one-year-old Kylie… ‘Kimberley!’ corrects long-suffering partner Dorothy (Ellie Nunn), who’s nine months pregnant with baby number two. What’s more, they are getting married in the morning.

While postman Tony (Matt Howdon) is still, well, just postman Tony, permanently and hopelessly (it seems) lusting after Deborah (Tricia Adele-Turner), briefly home for the wedding from her new life running a kangaroo sanctuary in Melbourne.

Will the wedding take place before the baby is born? (A strangely crucial question: for reasons that aren’t altogether clear, an aged relative is withholding a cash sum until they do). Will Tony persuade Deb not to return to Australia? You can probably see where this is heading.

And it’s all there! The so-terrible-they’re-good jokes (pregnant Dorothy feels like a delivery truck: “I’ve got something huge and human inside me’”); the slapstick (one of the most imaginative uses of a party blower I’ve ever seen, on or off stage); and the, yes, beautifully written characters lacking the perfect amount of depth. (Is fatherhood “as real and lasting as delivering a letter?” wonders Tony.)

We’ve also got Ken (Neil Jennings), landlord of The Crown, whose singing is so enjoyably average, you don’t want him ever to stop; and his partner Eve (Valerie Antwi), the wedding celebrant.

Director Joseph O’Malley does an excellent job of bringing out the clowning inherent in the script. Under his aegis, there are plenty of nods to the original cast, not just in voice and intonation but looks – a little oddly at times, to be honest.

I’ve a feeling the success of this play might rather depend on familiarity with the original series: many of the laughs owe much to fondness. Certainly, the minute the old theme tune begins, our audience is cheering.

But if you’ve grown out of getting drunk and hopelessly chasing the opposite sex, then a night at the theatre watching men who haven’t might be just the ticket.