Old farce stands the test of time

SEE HOW THEY RUN (Royal Exchange, Manchester)

MANCHESTER’S Royal Exchange Theatre has for many years had the noble resolve to offer a comedy or classic at Christmas as an alternative to pantomime and festive events. Sometimes this has worked well, sometimes not.

This old farce is so chewed at the edges even amateurs rarely do it. But by giving it a rich, hilarious new life with all the benefits of modern stagecraft, technical know-how and budget at their disposal, See How They Run is buffed up to show the Christmas gold beneath.

Philip King’s Forties farce, embedded deeply in the tradition of country vicars and wartime deprivation, is born anew by terrific casting and equally strong direction from Sarah Frankcom.

The latter imbues the show throughout with some lovely business for the actors, from knowing looks and grimaces from exquisite maid Ida (Kate O’Flynn) to the matter-of-fact nonchalance under fire of the vicar’s actress wife’s former leading man Clive (a wonderful laid-back Chris Harper).

The evening’s situations are silly to the point of surreality — at one point there are four vicars and a bishop dashing around the stage, and it all makes perfect sense. Some of the lines are hilarious (“No petrol?” “No, we’ve just filled our lighters...”) lines that prove King’s work to be not something to ignore as past it and passed over, but sparky and funny whatever the decade.

Proving he’s a master not just of mangled English but of comic acting in general, Arthur Bostrom — ’Allo ’Allo’s gendarme — is wonderful as the Bishop of Lax, come to visit his niece Penny (a stoic Laura Rogers), and getting himself tangled in a web of deceit concocted to cover up an innocent night out.

Her unsuspecting husband Lionel (Nick Caldecott), and even more unsuspecting stand-in vicar, Arthur Humphrey (a wonderfully dry Hugh Sachs) are drawn into this tissue of reality, blown up with gusto by the prowling Miss Skillon (Alexandra Mathie) and an escaped German prisoner (don’t ask) played as a vicar, naturally, by Mark Edel-Hunt.

The evening sparkles, the dialogue rushes and the second and third acts are sublimely silly. If one middle-England vicar is normally funny, four and a bishop are even better. .