Play What I Wrote

After six months away, a regional tour, two Laurence Olivier Awards (for Best New Comedy and Best Supporting Actor for diminutive dogsbody Toby Jones), and not forgetting one Whatsonstage.com Theatregoers’ Choice Award for Best Ensemble Performance, The Play What I Wrote is back at the West End’s Wyndhams Theatre for a second brief stint ahead of a Broadway transfer.

Hamish McColl and Sean Foley (aka The Right Size) and the ghosts of Eddie and Ernie seem refreshed and raring to go, spurring on more gales of laughter from their audience with their original winning formula as well as few new gags. And the mystery celebrities (Roger Moore on the press night, while others to date have included Ralph Fiennes, Richard Wilson, Ewan McGregor, Jerry Hall, Dawn French, Minnie Driver and Kenneth Branagh, who has also directs) keep on coming too for their nightly guest spot and good-natured send-up.

It’ll be interesting to see how American audiences – for whom Morecambe and Wise are hardly known, let alone a treasured national institution – react to this peculiarly British comic creation. Though best not to wonder for too long; just get along to the Wyndhams while you still can.

– Terri Paddock

Note: The following review dates from November 2001 and this production’s original West End season.

There’s one less copy of “The Best of Morecambe & Wise” at the HMV near Wyndham’s Theatre. I bought it within five minutes of leaving The Play What I Wrote, still floating on a cloud of feelgood nostalgia.

This odd tribute – full of high-energy physical comedy, slapstick and double entendre – is a hilarious and warm-hearted celebration, not just of Britain’s greatest ever comedy pairing, but of all double-acts. The show demonstrates how, when done right, the minds and talents of two can gel so seamlessly that they perform as a single entity.

Rightly then, Morecambe & Wise are invoked here by another great double act, Hamish McColl and Sean Foley, collectively known as The Right Size. These two have previously taken on Brecht and spent an entertaining couple of hours down the back of a sofa, but now they turn their attention to the late Eric & Ernie who, at the height of their power, had nearly 30 million of us glued to our television sets.

The slightly surreal play within a play plot launches with McColl and Foley being invited to perform a Morecambe & Wise tribute in “London’s glittering West End”. In true M&W style, McColl, as the Ernie Wise stand-in, refuses to do so as he wants to be taken seriously as a writer of serious drama. Foley manages to lure his partner to the theatre by convincing him they’re going to perform his play, A Tight Squeeze for the Scarlet Pimple, instead.

Anyone who remembers the old TV shows will know exactly what happens next as Foley, doing an uncanny Eric Morecambe, proceeds to turn the evening into complete farce at his sidekick’s expense. Assisting throughout the mayhem is the diminutive Toby Jones, Foley’s accomplice, who plays everyone else, from impresario David Pugh to Darryl Hannah and a crowd of angry peasants.

Just as in the original, celebrities provide an essential ingredient to the mix. And, from the director (none other than Kenneth Branagh) to the nightly mystery celebrity guests (which have included Ralph Fiennes, Richard Wilson and Sue Johnstone), they all seem game for a laugh and more than a drop of sweat.

Written by The Right Size along with longtime Morecambe & Wise collaborator Eddie Braben, The Play What I Wrote is a unique and extremely British concoction. That’s not to say that cave dwellers, foreign visitors to these shores and anyone else unfamiliar with Morecambe & Wise won’t enjoy it – it’s too funny not to. But being British and a child of the 1960s or 70s certainly helps in getting full “knockout” value from the humour. So go, enjoy, then buy the video of the real thing (while stocks last).

– Daniel Routledge