![]() As many historical plays do, this one has limited used for its female characters with Margaret Cabourn-Smith and the others often relegated to secretarial or long-suffering wife roles, references to period sexism, and the straight-to-audience explorations of the technical breakthroughs of The Goon Show, but they and the rest of the supporting cast still shine in their straight historical and more clownish composite characters.Īs befits a show about a technical innovator, the play makes good use of its space, with Katie Lias’s set creating depth through multiple rooms behind glass, to evoke studio recording areas and flashbacks to performances, nightmares and the battlefields of World War II. Stars Robert Wilfort (Spike Milligan), Patrick Warner (Peter Sellers), and Jeremy Lloyd (Harry Secombe) play perfectly their historical counterparts, their passing physical resemblance bolstered by clothing, props and performances which evokes without slavishly imitating. Milligan struggled throughout his life with the repercussions of his war service and his bipolar disorder, and this play is a glimpse into him through a specific period of his life, the script by Ian Hislop and Nick Newman recreating him through a dramatic ten-year episode (and, many would say, career peak), and using his own brand of comedy (sometimes through verbatim quotation and sometimes through imitation) rather than the oft-used and misused technique of simply speeding through a cradle-to-grave narrative. Though its other chief claim to fame is as an early notable leading role for Peter Sellers, who would later star in the Pink Panther series, amongst other things.īut this play, produced by Karl Sydow, Trademark Films, & PW Productions and the Watermill Theatre and directed by Paul Hart, isn’t a dramatic making-of feature for an old BBC radio show. These include The Beatles (most notably their films, Christmas records to their fans and the B-side to Let It Be, You Know My Name (Look Up The Number), Monty Python (for whom Milligan cameoed in their film Life of Brian), Eddie Izzard, Douglas Adams, and many more. ![]() Spike is Spike Milligan, and this play gives us a glimpse into the man’s life through his creation and run of the Goon Show, a now often forgotten (and now often politically incorrect) 1950s radio comedy show which mostly lives on today, as the announcer concludes the show pointing out, through the people it has influenced. ![]()
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