Nigel Planer has had a rich career as comedian, actor, singer and spoof-memoirist in the hilarious I An Actor. But in his playwriting debut he reminds me of a nervy impressionist who can do lots of funny voices but is deeply insecure about his own.
A virtual two-hander, his play is about a plasterer and his mate working on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. It starts like a Pete 'n' Dud sketch in which Ron Cook's aggrieved Lapo mincingly mimmicks Michelangelo for the benefit of Ralph Little's Loti. "I am not really a painter, you know, I'm a sculptor," says Cook lispingly sending up the whinging artist. But the point is made a dozen times that these two under-used artisans see themselves as "flunkeys to a Florentine fairy."
Having started as a comedy sketch, the play slides into a Stoppardian portrait of two men on the margin of great events. We get to hear of Raphael's rivalry with Michelangelo and Pope Julius's notorious financial unreliability. And, after a brief interlude in which the sacked workers become pub-satirists, we are treated to a grand Amadeus-like finale: one that suggests it is only the envious minor artist who can appreciate the audacity of genius.
Planer has patently done his homework. His Lapo and Loti are based on real people. He explains Michelangelo's astounding ability to bypass the traditional technique of "spolvero" in which an artist's drawing was transferred onto a layer of lime. Above all, Planer suggests that any artistic project is a matter of teamwork and that is only posterity that treats it as the work of the heroic individual. But, although Planer acknowledges his own indebtedness to Joshua Richards and Alan Osborne, a play is ideally the expression of a uniquely identifiable voice: this one, for all the singularity of its subject, feels more like a comic collage made up of Planer's theatrical memories.
Admittedly Ron Cook is very funny as the dedicated artisan outraged at the ability of the whining artist to claim all the credit for a collaborative venture. Ralph Little is also likeable as his foil, arguing that the two of them are "facilitators" rather than inspirational geniuses. And Jennie Darnell's production and Matthew Wright's design finally vouchsafe us an impressive glimpse of the completed Sistine Chapel frescos. But, while I don't doubt Planer's sincerity, his play feels like an extended revue-sketch that aspires to the ceiling but rarely gets off the ground.
· Until December 31. Box office: 0870 890 1104.
