Kenneth Branagh Is The Master Of Farce!

Best bit: Any time Mr Branagh donned a certain wig...

Any boring bits? None whatsoever - it's so fast paced there's no room for boring!

Who would like it? Any who likes to laugh, perhaps the older generations as it's a vintage style of comedy.

Who wouldn't like it? Tweens, people who don't like to laugh.

Morning after effect: A new found respect for K-Bran - they hype is justified!

Verdict: 4 out of 5 stars

There was a time in my adolescence when the name Kenneth Branagh was synonymous with the Iron Curtain, Potsdam, Yalta… Indeed, his was the voice that launched a thousand History Channel documentaries in a thousand high school history lessons. In Harlequinade, he revisits postwar Britain, but in an altogether different way. Straddling dual roles of director and actor, Branagh is a driving force at the centre of Terence Rattigan’s delightful one act farce Harlequinade.

Before the riotous ensemble performance, Zoe Wanamaker graced the stage in Rattigan’s poignant one-woman play All On Her Own, a markedly more somber affair with hints of hilarity, especially when Wannamaker embodied both a husband and wife whose bickering extended beyond the grave.

The veteran stage and film actress has a commanding presence and, given that flu season is upon us, effortlessly maintained a captivated audience amidst a sea of chesty coughs. Her well-to-do housewife dealing with the strain of grief after the suspicious death of her husband is particularly powerful a portrayal when she descends into uncertain madness, conversing with her late husband in order to find out if his death by drink and drugs was accidental or not. Chilling and moving, it’s the perfect monologue piece for a woman of Wanamaker’s considerable chops.

Despite the darker subject matter of All On Her Own, the tone and pace for the remainder of the evening was set in the opening moments of Harlequinade. Branagh, playing flamboyant thespian Arthur Gosport (who in turn is playing a rather over-the-hill Romeo) peacocks on stage, codpiece and all, eliciting laughs as he rehearses the bard’s well-trodden verses with his onstage wife and co-star, Edna Selby. Cursed to perform in Britain’s backwater theatres as part of a post war governmental scheme, the dynamic duo and their diva behavior promise farcical hijinks aplenty. They do not disappoint!

With visual, slapstick and witty humor so brilliantly timed, the production quickly became a guilty pleasure – lighthearted, silly and forever poking fun at itself. In the grand tradition of the art of Harlequinade (Britain’s answer to Commedia Dell’Arte), the escalating chaos on stage is so absurd it has to be seen to be believed – throw in a touch of bigamy, a sprinkling of inflated ego and Zoe Wanamaker as a dotty matriarch and you’ve got instant comedic chemistry! There’s definitely an air of The 39 Steps about it all.

While Branagh hams it up as the production’s obvious star, the ensemble cast shines brilliantly in its own right. Tom Bateman, currently making TV audiences swoon in ITV’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, is pitch perfect as the company’s put-upon stage manager, while Miranda Raison’s leading lady Selby is a deliciously manipulative and ridiculous prima donna of hysterical proportions.

I laughed out loud and I loved it.

Reviewed by Teia Fregona

Tuesday 28th October 2015
Garrick Theatre, London
Find me on Twitter: @_londontheatre_

View our show pages for more information about Harlequinade, Garrick Theatre.