Good Evening is a tribute to the talents of the late comic genius’ Peter Cook and Dudley Moore who emerged as a comedy team from the university based revue ‘Beyond the Fringe’. They influenced pretty much all comedy that came after them from Monty Python to most of the comedy you might see at this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival. This show is pretty much a series of sketches from Pete & Dud’s touring production of Good Evening which they performed in Melbourne at The Palais in 1971 and later took to the West End and Broadway with much success, skilfully performed by Shaun Micallef and Stephen Curry. It is pretty much a pet project by fan Shaun, though he admits he stole the idea from Tony Martin. This was originally performed at the Sydney Opera House in December, so Shaun and Stephen have had time to hone the characters and build up a lovely rapport.
Shaun & Stephen worked very well together, with Shaun mostly taking the Peter Cook parts and Stephen doing mostly Dudley. They obviously had a ball performing the various parts and both have a graceful, yet daffy physicality that added laughs on top of the clever script. Between the sketches the actors dropped character and bounced jokes off one another, mostly at each other’s expense that really added to the audience’s enjoyment, particularly the fans. The set is fabulous and sound and lighting very specki, because this was a proper theatre show. There were also some great songs from the original production and pianist on stage to play Dudley Moore’s piano parts that Stephen couldn’t replicate, most notably his ‘Kawai Sonata aka The Same To You’ (a playful version of the Colonel Bogey March).
It was very exciting for me to hear some of my favourite sketches performed, notably ‘Father and Son’, ‘One Leg too Few’, ‘The Music Teacher’, ‘At the Art Gallery’ and the wonderfully bizarre ‘The Frog and Peach’. It was more exciting for me to know that the young person beside me, as well as many others in the audience, were going to hear these for the first time and learn about a restaurant that only serves frogs and peaches and a one legged man who wants to audition for the role of Tarzan.
I heard most of these sketches growing up, on the Cheese Shop comedy radio show, long after Pete and Dud had stopped performing together. It’s amazing for me to think that World War 2 had occurred only 25 years before these sketches were written, which would be like mentioning something now that happened in the 80s. Many of the sketches referred to the war and how the world had changed since, like attitudes to the class system and the huge generation gap it created. You can’t help but wonder if the depth of humour in these sketches will work today.
This was obviously the thinking behind the idea to re-imagine some of the sketches and do them in other ways. I found these new ideas interesting but not very successful, at first I thought I might be prejudiced from my familiarity with the work, but I thought about it and there are strong reasons for them not working. ‘The Art Gallery’ in particular is about two working class blokes who I always had the impression were workmen at the Gallery on their lunchbreak. A lot of the humour comes from their uneducated opinions on the art, for example, they think you can tell a good artwork by the eyes following you around the room. They are familiar with all the art and have strong opinions about it, but they are just different to the opinions of those with uni degrees and it’s charming, funny and they call a bum a bum. But in this version the characters have transformed into the exact opposite: middle class art snobs. I think it’s an attempt to send up pretentious arty prats but didn’t really work. Maybe Pete & Dud’s silly voices had a lot to do with it too.
I shouldn’t quibble about their attempts to put their own stamp on the scripts. They are not Pete and Dud and can never really hope to exactly replicate the sketches , but Shaun Micallef and Stephen Curry are brilliant, hilarious and give it a bloody good go in this loving and entertaining tribute.
Good Evening runs until April 11th. Visit the comedy festival website for bookings and further details.