Jack Absolute Flies Again - NT

Oh gosh I thought this was beyond dire. Walked out in the interval on press night.

The Rivals is one of my favourite plays and I loved, loved 1M2G but this was just puerile and exceptionally poorly written.

Mostly 3s and 4s from the ones I saw. One 5 and a snippy 2 from the Grauniad who seemed to be lamenting the lack of critique of social classes that they saw in Sheridan's original. So overall a bit like the reviews on here.

I agree, I think in these times that people just want a good night out rather than a lecture.

Well I was booked for this and much ado on 30th so that's all gone down the pan. I know they'll move tickets but I doubt I'll find a seat at right place and date again.

Lost double theatre on last sat strike day too, I'm just hoping they don't call strikes when I need to travel to a festival next month or I'm stuffed.

Will go and check nt site out as soon as I have tried and failed to remember my password (was fine until they made me change it).

As the last show of my London trip and what a great way to end it. A really funny script from Richard Bean and Oliver Chris that kept tonight’s audience in stitches for the entire 2hr 40 minutes. As someone who is a big fan of the Carry On films and “Allo Allo”, it’s a show that really appealed to my sense of humour with its word play and at times physical humour and allowed me to just switch my brain off for a bit and have a very much needed night of comedy at the theatre. With so much serious stuff at the NT recently, it really made for a refreshing change to those types of productions. Certainly the show was well received by our audience tonight. It was just a nice experience to hear a room full of people laughing at the NT for the entire night again.

The breaking of the 4th wall in this production worked a treat, thanks mainly to the wonderful Kerry Howard as Lucy the maid. I would definitely agree with Steve in that whilst in OMTG, the men get the laughs, in JAFA, the humour definitely belongs with the ladies with Caroline Quentin giving an absolutely hilarious turn along with some amazing flexibility as Mrs Malaprop and who is obviously having a great time on stage with the script.

For the gents, Peter Forbes as Sir Anthony was another scene stealer and a shout out to James Corrigan as the Aussie pilot Bob Acres, another scene stealing performance (the bees and boxing scenes especially).

Whilst the humour landed well, I’m not too sure that the ending did as it was a massive tonal shift from everything that had been built up up to this point whereas I think with OMTG, the ending worked well with that play and maintained a similar tone to the rest of the play.

The dancing scenes were fun and certainly a nice nod to Caroline and Kelvin’s SCD appearances. The projections looked great from my front row stalls seat, though I imagine from further back or from the Circle they would look even better.

Rating - 4⭐️

I quite enjoyed this last night with a second row Friday Rush seat. The plot isn’t perfect but there are enough witty lines and there’s a certain charm to all this. I don’t see a long life for this though, but who knows? Glad I got to attend.

Saw this yesterday evening. Olivier about 2/3 full maybe (it was a captioned performance).

Enjoyed it though we thought the verbal sexual references may have been funnier if they’d been a bit more subtle than obvious. Likewise, there were a lot of swear words, which used sparingly can be very funny and meaningful, but used excessively lose their edge.

Family of four in front of us, parents, teenage daughter and son of about ten. Could see them cringing at times and the father and son left in the interval.

We felt it needed more work - not as funny, well written or developed as One Man, Two Guvnors.

Also, hadnt been to the NT since pre Covid and were surprised how tatty round the edges it’s getting. It used to be a great experience going to a Peter Hall production at the NT, full of expectation of seeing some big theatrical names or Productions. Times and audiences change, I guess.

I thought this was good overall and it was a fun night out but would agree it wasn't anyway near the level of One Man. There was so much going on that enough of it was funny and even when they overused certain points like the fourth wall breaking and the two Dudley's nothing overstayed its welcome too much as the whole thing kept moving.

As others have said Caroline Quentin and Peter Forbes were the stand outs with the younger cast members more of a mixed bag; James Corrigan's broad Aussie stereotype (even funnier when you're sitting next to your Aussie husband) and Helena Wilson as Julia the strongest.

Asked only to be hunky and northern Kelvin Fletcher just about managed it but only really came into life during the dance sequence where suddenly he was the most watchable person on stage.

And yes the ending doesn't really work that well, trying to inject realism into farce isn't easy and they didn't quite pull it off though I would say the main issue was the sequence was just too long.

I saw this last night. I would say it's as funny as One man two guvnors. The back projection effects were good. Every member of the cast was excellent. The dance was really well done. It is quite long but I enjoyed every minute. The ending surprised me. Well done NT on a great show. I have been theatre going for over 40 years and for laugh out loud moments this ranks as up with the very best. It might be difficult to transfer to the West End as the Olivier stage is so big and the projections might be beyond most theatres but it does deserve to do well.

Another rave from me - loved it. I found it just as funny as One Man Two Governors. Nice to see The Nash splash some cash on a tip top set and at last we have a production that fills the problematic Olivier space not just well but with total confidence. Kelvin was good but the guy has no comic timing and he was shown up a bit by everyone else who were just fizzing. I also loved how the play develops at the very end - it totally worked for me and the writing and acting changed gear very effectively and skilfully at that point.

Thanks so much for the reply. Might try a different performance then.