Nothing inspires a glow of contentment quite like candlelight at Christmas: except when it has been imposed by the government, that is. Stephen Sharkey’s farce adapted or, as the author puts it, “lovingly ripped-off from” Feydeau’s Free Exchange Hotel, is set on 1 January 1974, when Edward Heath’s introduction of the three-day week plunged the country into unexpected blackouts.
It is a fine farcical premise to have a libidinous bunch of Liverpudlians groping about in the dark. But Sharkey’s rewrite misses the point that Feydeau’s farces are funny because the door-flapping, trouser-dropping hysteria emerges from a half-credible version of reality. There’s simply too much about Sharkey’s situation that doesn’t add up. Are we really supposed to believe that a couple of suburban Liverpudlians would employ a live-in French maid, albeit one seemingly modelled on Joanna Lumley’s look from the New Avengers? Unfortunately, the humour is similarly effortful. A search for a mislaid copy of The Female Eunuch prompts the comment: “You won’t find Germaine Greer in my drawers.” And the presence of a verbally challenged maiden aunt completely bypasses the fact that a malapropism is only amusing if it vaguely resembles the intended meaning. How about this for an exit line: “It was Loughborough University.” Get it? Not entirely? Me neither.
Even in such austere times as the winter of 1974, there’s not much the actors can do with such threadbare material. But the entire cast is, bizarrely, upstaged by a masterclass in comic timing and delivery by the disembodied voice of Ken Dodd, who has prerecorded the lines of a loquacious mynah bird. You could say that it is a commendable attempt to offer an alternative to pantomime, though the gratuitous insertion of an “oh yes it is” dialogue merely indicates the desperation of the production to have its Christmas cake and eat it.
• Until 10 January. Box office: 0151-709 4776. Venue: Playhouse, Liverpool.
