That Alfie, he does go on a bit...

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Alfie, Grange Arts Centre
The Coliseum’s co-production of Bill Naughton’s problematic play-turned movie-turned novel finally arrives in Oldham after touring since January.

And it’s still problematic — as is the other show from the same early-Sixties period over at the Royal Exchange, “Saturday Night and Sunday Morning”.

Both feature a predatory male being what he is — and both take far too long to get to any sort of point, though admittedly both, and especially this one, can be highly amusing at times.

In this play’s last scene the character with which it starts, Alfie’s married girl friend Siddie, tells him he’ll never change. The lights dim on Alfie quizzically staring at the audience and a message that has been clear for the best part of three hours.

Alfie is selfish and self-centred; totally without care or concern for others, especially women. He takes what he can get when he can get it, with no fear of consequences.

The evening is a parade of Alfie’s boyish charms and manly conquests and discards: from Siddie through Annie and Gilda to dejected Lily — the latter the good wife whose will gave in and allowed Alfie to corrupt her.

But the story isn’t the sole problem in director David Thacker’s adaptation. Thacker has gone back to the book rather than the other visual representations of Naughton’s world, in the belief that the book was the final summing-up on Alfie’s unpleasantly macho character.

In the novel — a mainly fantasy-based narrative — you create your own world; on stage it’s done for you, in this case as a fairly bare, Sixties kitchen across which Alfie struts, laying down his dinosaur-like attitude to the opposite sex.

Thacker’s leisurely pace starts to lay a bit heavy after a while, even though our boyishly handsome, suitably cocky and charming leading man, David Ricardo-Pearce, is just what the girls ordered. He plays Alfie almost without colour or depth of character. This Alfie is all self-protecting surface, with little humanity beneath.

The supporting cast, notably John Branwell, Vicky Binns and Barbara Hockaday, portray several roles and provide the necessary flavour to the evening, but a half hour shorter running time would be its greatest asset.