Jack and Charley are a pair of Oxford chumps who use the imminent arrival of Charley's aunt from Brazil as an excuse to invite Kitty and Amy, the young ladies they love, to lunch in Jack's college rooms. When the aunt fails to materialise, the pair persuade a fellow student, Lord Fancourt Babberley, to impersonate her with predictable consequences in Brandon Thomas's 1892 farcical comedy.
I must confess to never having been introduced to Charley's Aunt before. Now I have, I believe that it is a pleasure best taken in small doses. The mixture of the golly and the gooey, of hijinks and sentimentality, is dated and things get off to a painfully slow start in Mel Smith's underpowered and over-designed production.
The first 30 minutes are about as funny as a funeral, with lots of tedious hearty acting. And there are moments when it seems as if the chaise longue is in danger of giving the most handsome and restrained performance of the evening. Things buck up no end once Stephen Tompkinson's Babberley has donned his hooped skirt, although mysteries remain, such as why he is at least 25 years older than the other undergraduates and sporting an accent that makes him sound like a cross between Kenneth Williams and Princess Anne. That aside, Tompkinson saves the evening with a performance that combines consummate comic timing with oodles of charm, and there are one or two set pieces, including the glorious pouring of a cup of tea, that are sublime. But with a cumbersome set requiring two intervals, it is a long evening that only intermittently pays comic dividends, and there was hardly a moment when I did not wish that I was watching Tompkinson play Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest instead.
· Until tonight. Box office: 0870 060 6651. Then touring.
