Young Dick Barton – The Making of a Legend

If Superman was born on Krypton and Batman Begins tells how Bruce Wayne first became a force for good in Gotham City, then what were the origins of special agent Dick Barton, the ex-commando who saved Britain from disaster on BBC radio between 1946 and 1951 and who kept the entire country listening every night to his cliff hanging tales of derring-do?

Having already staged five different spoof ‘episodes’ of these wireless adventures, complete with a BBC announcer in evening dress, the Warehouse team is probably best placed to crack the code of Barton’s sketchy past before he became a national superhero, although one might have thought that by now someone would have said derring-don’t. I mean, how many more times can Dick Barton dish out a thoroughly British sock on the jaw to a “filthy foreigner” or escape from near death at the hands of some crazed villain bent on global domination – and still make you laugh?

Well, once it hits its stride Duncan Wisbey’s exuberant script and Stefan Bednarczyk’s comic lyrics set to music by composers ranging from Orff to Verdi, just gets funnier – and more outlandish – as it rolls along and is probably stronger – and stranger – than the company’s previous Barton efforts.

Young, parentless Richard Barton, it turns out, learned to become “firm and upstanding” Dick at his public school where he sorted out bullies with a single blow and never snitched on a chum. From then on Ted Craig’s production ensures that the preposterous plot spirals beyond playground parody and into an OTT 1930s world of its own, involving an array of pipe-smoking Brits and funny foreigners, a dastardly scheme to overthrow the monarchy with poisoned fairy cakes, a confrontation with King Kong astride the Empire State Building, a secret weapon in the form of a lethal Morris dance, and a masterplan to dominate the world with junk food packed with addictive E-numbers.

Jeremy Barlow’s earnest schoolboy Barton is always at the centre of the action, and already showing the adolescent beginnings of a stiff upper lip, although as the hard-working ensemble (who accompany themselves on a variety of musical instruments) hurtle towards the cliff-hanging ending, it does begin to feel as if a few too many eccentric characters, wacky subplots and false diversions have been wedged in.

Young Dick’s wholesome coming-of-age adventures are light years away from the modern teen spy action of Alex Rider or the wizardry of Harry Potter, but they do take you back to a long-lost time when Britain still ruled the waves and when radio’s quintessentially British Barton never waived the rules to win his war on terror. So go with your tongue well and truly in you’re your cheek and enjoy watching the symbolic power of fairy cakes on young boys.

– Roger Foss