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Crow Productions in association with The Landor Theatre present
On The Ceiling
by Nigel Planer Directed by Robert McWhir
The Landor Theatre
23 April - 3 May 2008
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A review by David Hermann for EXTRA! EXTRA!
Nigel Planer’s On the Ceiling proposes the following. Imagine Michelangelo. Imagine him not as the archetypal Renaissance Man who casually painted heaven’s history onto the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel with one hand and sketched the odd architectural grand design with the other while directing freshly made-up love poems at the newly finished David-statue across the room. Forget all that. Instead, imagine the great Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni as a petulant, prancing homosexual whose lack of talent is only outweighed by his arrogance and desperate need for attention. Picture him as a toffee-nosed slacker who fails to turn up most days and leaves the painting to his decent, hard-working assistants, two spirited proletarians whose hearty discourse on matters of love, life and art make up an attractive secret history. An amiable premise for comedy, no doubt. And actors Jack Faires and Simon Naylor make the most of it. Even on the show’s first night, with its customary bloops and blunders, Faires and Naylor were a delight to watch. Naylor brings stereotypical (and stereotypes, as any 'fuel know', are an essential ingredient of great comedy) northern feistiness to the stage and rubs it up against Faires’s initially weedy, Baldrick-esque southern sniffle. The two Italia Conti graduates (class of 2005) settle into the old and endlessly enjoyable high-status/low-status-game with great ease and professional nonchalance. The first half of the show belongs largely to Naylor’s character Lapo; a task that can be daunting, but is accomplished by this intensely talented young actor with bravado and excellent comic timing. After the interval, when the play - possibly to its disadvantage - abandons comedy for a smattering of serious drama, Jack Faires, who carries an ingenious air of early Michael Palin, saves the production from giving in to a text gone soggy. His delivery is thoughtful and varied and would be perfect if the text were more poetic and rhythmical. I suppose you’ve detected my main point of criticism. While this is a perfectly enjoyable fringe-production, the play itself is nothing to write home about. Here’s why. Nigel Planer’s comic compositions gravitate towards the carry-on end of things, and not in a good way. During the first half, for example, a conversation about Loti’s romantic pursuits is so rigorously drawn out and so shamelessly exploited for its base comedy (I counted 14 mostly horticultural euphemisms for the word Penis) that one can notice the laughter in the audience dying away gradually until there is nothing left but a series of well-meaning sighs and soft shakes of the head. Anyway. End of negative criticism. This is a big, fat, juicy and still genuinely funny fringe-show that you should see primarily for its two stars, who, I am certain, have a bright future ahead of them.
Box Office 020 7737 7276 £10 - £8 concessions Tues – Sat 7:30pm Matinee Sat 3rd May at 2.30pm
The Landor Theatre 70 Landor Road LONDON SW9 9PH
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