It Runs in the Family
Ray Clooney
The Mill Sonning
Star rating: 3.5
The only way to do farce and make it work is to hurl it at the audience fast and furious and I’ve known this since childhood when, after G&S, Brian Rix’s Whitehall farces were my favourite form of theatre. It’s what I always chose for birthday treats and the like. This jolly production of Ray Clooney’s 1987 comedy shows a clear understanding of exactly how to carry farce off with aplomb.
I’m not sure I can summarise the convoluted plot for anyone who is new to It Runs in the Family. Suffice it to say that it involves dotty doctors, misunderstandings, a stereotypically fierce matron, a pantomime, wives, mistresses, silly disguises, shenanigans with doors and windows and lots of “sua padre”.
And the best thing about it is the timing, especially by James Bradshaw as Dr Bonny who has a superb knack of adding high pitched incredulity to his petulant repeats of whatever daft thing someone else has just said. He – usually in partnership with Steven Pinder, (fine performace) as Dr Mortimore – is also terrific at allowing exactly the right length of silence for the joke to settle and the laughter to taper before saying anything else.
Francis Redfern, a recent Bristol Old Vic Theatre School graduate, turns in a strong account of Leslie, the aggrieved fatherless teenager and the window sill scene with Elizabeth Elvin’s Matron is splendid situation comedy.
Alex Marker’s set – the play demands three doors and a window – is ingeniously, and neatly, contrived on the Mill’s wide, thrust playing space. The unmistakable hospital signage beyond the doors of the “doctors’ common room” (does such a thing exist in real life?) is a nice touch too.
The first half is arguably better than the the second but in general this pleasantly entertaining nonsense, is ideal for a Saturday afternoon alongside the good folk of rural Berkshire with the prettiest bit of River Thames I know lapping a few feet from the door.
The deal at the Mill is a meal/theatre package. So everyone eats lunch or dinner before the performance. This year it has changed from buffet to table service in the newly decorated and configured dining room. Full marks to the staff whose service is nearly as slick as the production which follows, although I wish there could have been more choice on the menu.
Photograph by Carter Joy Evans
