Only Fools and Horses - TRH / U.K Tour

Everybody is entitled to that little box in their head that says "tickle me here and I'm happy" and if Mr Barnaby needs tickling elsewhere, then it's great that something else out there makes him happy. And on a side note, I thank Mr Barnaby for his Beat-Baz-to-the-News insider knowledge. That said, I absolutely loved this.

Some spoilers follow. . .

Sure, it doesn't reinvent the wheel, or more specifically, it just patches up an old wheel with love and affection, and repackages it as musical theatre. But it works beautifully, because this show has a big heart and cares about everybody:

(1) It cares about fans of the show: this show is packed with scenes and jokes and characters I remember from the show. The rendering of Rodney and Trigger and Boycie in this are nigh on perfect, and the other characters come close;

(2) It cares about theatregoers generally, because this still all makes sense as a story that you can follow from beginning to end, which references both the beginning and the ending type storylines from the actual show. This is important because the first three seasons of the show were super jokey, and not conducive to a storyline, or characters, that could engage emotionally for two and a half hours. But after three seasons, one of the main actors died, his character died with him, remaining characters were deepened, and romantic story-lines for Del Boy and Rodney were introduced, expanding their horizons beyond provoking each other for laughs. And these expanded horizons inform the storyline here, and engage as a story;

(3) It cares about musical theatre fans specifically, as in Raquel (Del Boy's girlfriend from the latter seasons of the show), this show finds a traditional "I want" character, someone modest and hopeful for a life beyond limited horizons, and her intro song "The Girl" is the perfect "I want" song, an utterly engaging and tender expression of the hope we all have for a life beyond our own lonely limits. Of course, her intro storyline from the show is thrown in for good measure, but this song strips that intro of it's inherent jokiness, and informs her progression through the story with the kind of deep emotional engagement that musical theatregoers tend to prefer;

(4) It cares about fans of historical British music stylings, referencing in it's new compositions the cheeky chappy jauntiness of eighties style Madness, but also the cheeky chappy jauntiness of music hall and "Me and My Girl" decades earlier. Of course this cheeky chappy jauntiness was present too in John Sullivan's original intro and outro songs from the show, which become here a mash-up to form this show's principal theme: "Only Fools and Horses/Hooky Street." This bright cheeriness is balanced musically by more emotional original songs, like the aforementioned "the Girl," and well-placed covers like "Holding Back the Years" and "Lovely Day."

(5) And for good measure, this show cares about human beings generally, about how short our lives are, how everything changes around us whether we like it or not. This show defies time while ultimately surrendering to it. SPOILERS. . . . It defies time by giving us a world where Lennard Pearce's Grandad can coexist with his brother Buster Merryfield's Uncle Albert, who in the show was drafted in after Pearce's death, both here played by Paul Whitehouse. It defies time by simply existing, if fact. But it surrenders to time in a glorious and poignant image of the characters overwhelmed by a backdrop of a future London they will never know, one which includes the Shard, which of course they instantly discount and disbelieve. The characters are framed in the past, they are part of that past, and they will stay there, just as we are framed in the soon-to-be-past for those who come after us. It's wonderful really.

And so are many of the performances. Dianne Pilkington's sweet (and superbly emotive) Raquel is a catalyst for everything heartbreaking and meaningful about the show, her song "The Gift" as soft and soppy as anything in a Gary Barlow musical. Paul Whitehouse is at his beautiful best, muting his every mugging instinct to serve the characters of gentle dopey (yet sly) Grandad and boastful raucous (yet soft) Uncle Albert, and as a consequence he's terrifically funny. Equally funny are Ryan Hutton as whinging Rodney, Jeff Nicholson as brash Boycie and Peter Baker as single-minded Trigger who are all effortlessly accurate and funny in their portrayals. Baker is also inadvertently moving in the accuracy of his portrayal, given the show's underlying theme regarding the passage of time, as Roger Lloyd-Pack, whose comic perfection as Andrew Aguecheek at the Globe I was lucky enough to see, recently passed away, and Baker looks so very young as he brings Lloyd-Pack's Trigger back to us.

There are flaws to the show. Sometimes the need to rehash old comic bits trumps story progression. For example, Boycie's sudden trip to a sperm clinic seems utterly unrelated to anything in the story, and is there simply to rehash an old laugh from the show, but ultimately, even that can be forgiven, as there is a hilarious Pythonesque image associated with this sequence. Also, many old laughs fall flat now as the plot can't pause enough to give them shrift. And Tom Bennett's Del Boy struggles to connect for the first twenty minutes just because Bennett has the impossible task of filling the shoes of Britain's best-loved actor in the prime of his comedy life. And though he doesn't have David Jason's instinct for a punchline, Bennett makes his Del Boy work as well as anyone could.

All in all, this is a fabulous show that will run and run, as like a Jack of all trades, it may be the master of none, but its often better than the master of one. 4 stars from me.