Elvis comedy is a charmer

MARTHA, JOSIE AND THE CHINESE ELVIS, Oldham Coliseum

IT’S a terrible title. The sort that sounds so lame you might not want to go.

But get past it: despite lack of purpose, realistic characters and much of a plot, Charlotte Jones’s comedy charms thanks to the imagination of its author — then virtually unknown, now a hot theatre name — and is an enjoyable treat.

Commissioned by Bolton Octagon in 1999 and set just after Christmas, it was Jones’ first big hit. The Coliseum recently ran her more recent and thoughtful “Humble Boy”, which isn’t nearly as funny.

Meet Martha, the religious-nut cleaner with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; Josie, a retiring sex worker; Josie’s mentally-challenged daughter Brenda Marie; Lionel, Josie’s last client, who comes for the nice line in women’s clothes; Tim Wong, actually the Vietnamese Elvis (potentially an even worse title, right there), and Louise, Josie’s prodigal elder daughter, whose disappearance some years before was explained to her younger sister by Josie telling her she was dead. As you do.

This is a clear early work: packed with silly lines and oddball characters in search of a story to tell, but so daft you enjoy the ride towards its well-set-up but unlikely feelgood finale.

After deciding — on her 50th birthday, six days after the new Millennium begins — that the life of a dominatrix isn’t really for her, Josie is thrown a party by Lionel and into the throng first comes the Chinese Elvis, new to the role and not up to date with the songs; and later Louise, the missing daughter, who in one of the play’s few serious moments explains why she went away.

Kevin Shaw’s production bowls along to a finale in which everyone who is making up makes up, Lionel gets to tango with the cleaner, and Brenda Marie finds a friend in Elvis.

There’s a disarmingly mad performance from Becky Hindley as Martha, a disarmingly charming one from Catherine Kinsella as Brenda Marie and characters-at-loggerheads from Sarah Parks and Clara Darcy as Josie and Louise.

Underplaying hero of the evening is probably Michael Strobel as Lionel, while Nicholas Goh belts out a few Elvis hits, badly, but turns on the ancient wisdom when he puts down the microphone.

It’s a weird collection of people and a mixed bag of jokes, but somehow it all works rather well.