THEATRE REVIEWS

The Goons are a national institution and to try and better them is foolhardy, but imitation is the best form of flattery. At the West Yorkshire Playhouse Roy Smiles has had a go with his version of events, under their song title Ying Tong. The story is based around Spike Milligan's mental breakdowns whilst Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe were trying to fulfill their commitment of one show a week to the BBC. For Spike this was an impossible task and it is not surprising, after all he had gone through, that his health broke down and other writers had to be brought in to complete the commitment.

Does it work? well in a strange way it does, for most of the audience have no knowledge of the times when the original work was produced and the variance from the original is not noticed. Some of the words used on stage would not have been allowed to be used in the original broadcasts which was also true of how the characters performed on stage. The whole thing has to be daft and today's generation do not quite understand how far daft went and so this show only just got there. We see the three at the microphone with the BBC announcer Wallace Greenslade brought in to show how ludicrous and pompous things had become in post war Britain. They go through a facsimile of one of their scripts using the voices for which they became famous. We hear Eccles, Grytpype Thynne, Bluebottle and Min who everyone was taking off in the street outside the studio. The writer tries to get into the mind of Spike Milligan, an impossible task, and show us his illusions whilst undergoing treatment for his breakdown of the mind. Something that troubled him for the rest of his life. The relationship with the two remaining Goons, Peter Sellers and Harry Seacombe, was shown and an insight into the characters explored.

Not an easy task for the actors called upon to play these mad characters, but they did a fine job with possiblly Christian Patterson as Harry Secombe becoming also most indistinguishable from the original, Peter Temple as Peter Sellers showed that he could capture the voices that Sellers hid behind and James Clyde had the impossible task of getting to grips with Spike Milligan the mad genius which he wrestled with and won. Jeremy Child as Wallace Greenslade added a nice touch and gave that air of normality.

All this was set against a nice piece of design work by Peter McKintosh that showed studios and hospital ward merging into second world war vista and gave Director Michael Kingsbury the backdrop to work against.

The audience fully appreciated what they had experienced; to be shown how brilliant these performers were and what a genius Milligan was to be able to produce consistently brilliant scripts under such pressure. The appreciation was shown in their thunderous applause after the cast had performed the song Ying Tong. Do not miss this piece of comedy history. © BA

“Ying Tong” is in Leeds on the 22nd october to the 20th November, 2004. Council car parking charge £1 form 5.30pm.