Following teenage trials and tribulations

Photo: Jonathan Keenan

PING-PONG, anyone? Oliver (Elliot Levey) prepares to serve us his young life in The Mighty Walzer.

THE MIGHTY WALZER

(Royal Exchange, Manchester, to July 30)

EARLY on in this entertaining, thoroughly engaging trip down Manchester's Jewish memory lane - a sort of Prestwich version of Woody Allen's lovely "Radio Days" ­- the "mighty" teenage Oliver Walzer tells the audience his family has always had a tendency to start out well then gradually tail off to an ignominious finish.

So it proves again. Oliver is his parents' great hope; the first family member to get into Cambridge; the first to show a skill that might make him a sporting champion one day, even if the sport is table tennis. But by the end he has adopted the family position; he's a relative failure ­- though by all accounts a happy one, living in Venice and working as a tourist guide.

Hustler

In between, Manchester author Howard Jacobson (his award-winning book adapted here by playwright Simon Bent, and rather well) holds court on stage, the teenage boy now looking at the past of the Fifties and early Sixties from the vantage point of himself as the 40-ish man.

We watch him recall his painfully shy youth, his parents' Jewish-cliche argumentativeness. His father (Jonathan Tafler) is a get-rich-quick sales hustler, his mother (Tracy-Ann Oberman) typically extols him to do well, but not too well. He tries out for the table tennis team at the Akiva social club and finds he's very good; he fools around with girls - but not too graphically - and goes though all the other perils of teenage boys.

You might argue that in some ways the play mirrors the family; it too tails off a little as we near the end and teenage incident gives way to more sober manhood. But one would have be a little churlish to argue the point too strongly.

Engaging

In most respects Jonathan Humphreys's production is a perfect, undemanding way for the theatre to head into the summer break - funny, easy to follow and nicely put together, though one could perhaps point to the narrated nature of it all. Oliver (Elliot Levey) talks to us - a lot; his monologues interspersed with usually engaging scenes with friends and family. As it happens no one is going to mind this too much because he's a very likeable actor playing a likeable role, ably supported by the equally enjoyable performances around him. Enjoy the summer.