Stage show comes out of shadows

THE KING’S SPEECH, Opera House, Manchester, to Saturday

It’s odd how plays sometimes fall through the cracks. Before the movie of this title won Oscars and made an even bigger star of Colin Firth, few knew it was already a play.

Writer David Seidler’s problem was that his play was swamped by his movie - so much so that a run in the West End two years after the film closed within a couple of months.

But having fallen temporarily by the wayside, the good news is that the stage version is now flourishing.

The story of speech therapist Lionel Logue (Jason Donovan) and stammerer Bertie (Raymond Coulthard), second in line to the throne of George V and younger brother of Edward VIII, is as charming and heart-warming as its big-budget brother.

Smaller in scale and a little more stylised — Stanley Baldwin (William Hoyland) and Winston Churchill (Nicholas Blane) are here almost a couple of comedy walk-ons, while the archbishop (Martin Turner) is portrayed as a mean-spirited old cove. But the politics of the period are far more pronounced than in the film. It is made clear here just why Edward VIII had to go — not simply for his dalliance with Mrs Simpson, but because he basically supported the Nazis and expected to return as the Hitler-restored monarch after the war.

But as with the screen version, the core of the story is the remarkable relationship between the scared, much-put-upon king-to-be and the unqualified Aussie interloper Logue, which is achieved in a thoroughly sweet way. The result is to make Bertie a remarkably sympathetic character and Logue the best mate he’d always needed.

Of course the play is sentimental: Logue cutting through the pomp, finding the real Bertie underneath and fixing the king’s stammer in short and inspirational order with nothing more than a couple of years worth of cheeky charm, a listening ear and a few swear words.

Coulthard is supremely stiff upper lipped to his medals and sword, while Jason Donovan — okay I’ll say it, I’ve never rated him as an actor before — is here well cast, though looks a little young.

The whole thing is genuinely well done and brilliantly entertaining — and Donovan does the Aussie accent rather well...