Monday 17th – Saturday 22nd May, 7.45 on Monday to Saturday and 2.30 on Thursday and Saturday at The Cambridge Arts Theatre. £10-20.
Stop Messing About takes its audience back to a 1960s BBC radio studio and delights us with the sketches and musings of Carry On star Kenneth Williams and his gang. Part throwback and part send-up, the show represents everything that was brilliant about British comedy all that time ago, and has a superbly strong cast that ensure giggles even when the jokes fall flatter than a transvestite’s chest. See? It’s infectious.
Kenneth Williams was famously a very tragic character – Michael Sheen’s portrayal of him in a recent BBC series is all loneliness and depression – but Robin Sebastian ensures that we see the side of Williams as we would like to remember him. He is quick, bitchy and comes alive when faced with an audience, making the convention that the theatre audience double up as the radio audience (there are even prompts for applause) all the more significant.
Sebastian’s vocal work and facial expressions are Williams’s, and there are moments where watching him is like experiencing the man himself. Back-of-neck hairs make a welcome appearance as soon as Sebastian opens his mouth and reveals that camp, East-End drawl that made Williams shine. While the tragedy of the actor is certainly left out, Williams’s desire to be centre stage is explored as Sebastian recites some of his most famous Carry On lines with the pride of a true thesp. The cheer that erupted around the theatre as Sebastian cries ‘Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!’ was truly spine-tingling, and like having one of the greats back with us.
The supporting cast are all excellent too, and India Fisher (as Joan Sims) and Sebastian make, if you’ll excuse the Carry On pun, a lovely pair. Sims was always one of Williams’s favourites on the Carry On set, and the sexually ambiguous star even proposed a convenience marriage to her. This brother/sister camaraderie is captured perfectly by Fisher and Sebastian and gives the whole show a sense of fun that you just don’t get in student drama.
While it is Sebastian’s voice that is the most incredible, Fisher and Nigel Harrison (as Hugh Paddick) do their fair share of accent work too, going everywhere from Birmingham to Mexico via Oklahoma. Charles Armstrong as straight-faced announcer Douglas Smith adds some tranquillity to the madness, but ultimately this is the Kenneth Williams show, and rightly so.
The jokes come thick and fast so that the show is never boring, and when one joke gets a groan a gag a few seconds later will receive a roaring cheer. The actors are conscious of the dated nature of some of the lines and improvise accordingly when the tumbleweed enters, but all in all the mix of penis puns, double entendres and classic British sketches is enough to keep any lover of Carry On comedy belly laughing until they need to see the nurse. Ooooh, Matron.
