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Published: 22 December, 2011
by STEPHEN GRIFFIN

“I understand you have rooms to let.”

From the moment an impossibly toothsome Peter Capaldi – channelling Alec Guinness, who was himself channelling Alastair Sim by way of Kenneth Tynan – utters that line, you can relax, secure in the knowledge that this adaptation of the 1955 Ealing film is going to be on the money.

What could have been a blasphemous tinkering with a much-loved classic has on the whole made a triumphant transition – that line being one of the few to make it through the process.

This is not the first stage version of the film – Tim Brooke-Taylor appeared opposite the late Dulcie Gray in a 1999 production – but it is the most high profile, and deservedly so.

Its comedy credentials are impeccable: it’s written by Father Ted writer Graham Linehan, directed by Sean Foley (best known, perhaps, as a progenitor of the Morecambe and Wise confection, The Play What I Wrote) and joining Capaldi are the likes of Ben Miller, James Fleet and Marcia Warren.

For the uninitiated, the plot revolves around the attempt by a gang of criminals to dispose of a frail old lady who discovers that the string quintet rehearsing in her antimacassared, lavender-scented King’s Cross home are, in fact, responsible for a nearby bank robbery (cue a timely pop at bankers).

William Rose’s original Oscar-nominated script was one of Ealing’s darkest comedies – much darker, really, than this production, which plays as a Marx brothers film laced with a generous dash of Looney Tunes.

Capaldi is a constant delight as “Professor” Marcus, the leader of the gang, but there’s much else to admire – not least Stephen Wight’s pill-popping kleptomaniac and Clive Rowe’s Dougal-sque “One Round”.

Mind you, the real scene stealer is literally just that: Michael Taylor’s extraordinary lopsided set.

In short, the perfect alternative panto.

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