Five star laughs

ONE MAN TWO GUVNORS, Lowry, Salford
THE tragedy of this glorious show is that nothing I can say can persuade you to go and buy a ticket. Because there are none to be had.

Whether It is undoubted star James Corden, or all the five-star reviews the show got in London, the week-long Lowry run has been sold out for weeks and rightfully so: this is probably the funniest National Theatre comedy since Noises off.

Though based on the traditions of 16th century Italian comedy, don’t let that put you off. Well, not that it could.

Carlo Goldoni’s mannered original has been torn limb from limb by playwright Richard Bean and director Nicholas Hytner and stuck back together as a traditional British farce, now set in low-life Brighton in 1963, an amalgam of the delicious world of the Carry On films, Benny Hill and Ray Cooney, running on fabulous ensemble playing and timed to within an inch of its life — even in the second act, when the pace falls from breakneck to something nearer breakleg...

There is a skiffle band between each act — with accompaniment from Corden and other actors on xylophone, banjo and even tuned car horns; and some fabulous knockabout physical comedy, timed to perfection in the famous dinner-for-two-parties scene that climaxes the first frantic half.

Here Corden, the wonderfully funny Tom Edden (in a wonderful turn as a waiter in his Eighties) and a “woman from the audience” are coaxed into the mayhem in one of the funniest scenes I’ve seen in years.

Corden may not exactly be lean but he is decidedly keen as he throws himself around the stage as a failed skiffle player, employed as a minder by a toff who has murdered his beloved’s psycho brother, and also by the sister herself, not that either of them know it.

Corden controls the show, controls the cast and pretty much has the audience eating out of his hand in a brilliantly energetic turn full of ad libs and false corpses.

Jemima Rooper is great as the bereaved girl and as the girl’s back-from-the-dead brother; Oliver Chris is wonderful as Stubbers, her upper-class-twit-murderer-boyfriend, and Daniel Rigby is hilarious as a dreadful would-be actor. Suzie Toase keeps the female end up as the Barbara Windsor-ish servant of the title’s would-be squeeze.

But this is, after Corden’s star turn, an exquisitely funny ensemble comedy of the utmost silly quality. I’d give it five more stars...