The (no so) Good Life – a review
Yesterday I travelled down from London in order to attend a touring performance of a new stage version of the highly-popular BBC (Bob Larbey and John Esmonde-written) television comedy sit-com The Good Life (1975- 1978) at the Chichester Festival Theatre.
In all honesty I was not expecting a great deal of this revival forty-plus years on.
Like me, many Rusters will probably recall the original, featuring the Goods (Richard Briers and Felicity Kendall) as the idealistic younger couple living in suburbia who attempt to go “off grid” and live self-sufficiently and their neighbours the Leadbetters – played Paul Eddington and Penelope Keith – a typically well-established, aspirational but conservative (with a small “c”), middle class couple whose attitudes tend to epitomise everything the Goods are seeking to get away from.
In the TV series the set-up initially established the characters and relationships by drawing upon their obvious differences, the Goods enthusiastically embracing both the hard work and joys of “going country”, whilst their counterparts the Leadbetters look on in semi-bemusement, simultaneously aghast at them giving up the very aspects of comfortable suburban life that they (the Leadbetters) are so proud of and have worked so hard to achieve and yet also getting on with them so well as friends.
Much of the “action” centred around the characters joshing, teasing and sparring about each others’ lifestyles.
Later, as the sit-com hit the height of its “mainstream success” stride, the essentials of the (“would-be country bumpkins versus arch middle class semi-snobs”) set-up were effectively abandoned and it became a typical middle-of-the-road “two couples” comedy sit-com of its era.
This new (stage) version of The Good Life is really a starring vehicle for actor Rufus Hound and, rumours have it, is on tour prior to a prospective run in the West End.
Sad to report, it is not much cop.
I claim little personal expertise in theatre creativity or quality but, simply upon the evidence of last night’s performance, I am both surprised if the rumour is true,and it is indeed being considered for a West End run and also pretty confident that it will not run for long if it gets one.
What seems to have occurred is that Jeremy Sams – the writer and director – has mixed together various aspects of the original TV series with his pick of an a la carte menu of new innovations and twists in an apparent effort to make it relevant to today’s audience.
The result is a messy botch-up job which falls flat.
The play begins with Tom and Barbara Good (played by Sally Tatum) at breakfast on his 40th birthday, which gives Tom a chance to reflect upon the pitfalls and disappointments of now being officially “old”.
It isn’t long before he goes off to work, after which Barbara – who has apparently been reading up on “going country and becoming self-sufficient” – suddenly decides that they’re going to make the big change.
We next see Tom returning home from his advertising agency – where Jerry Leadbetter (played by Dominic Rowan) also works [if my memory serves – which by the way increasingly it does not – there was never any suggestion in the original TV series that the pair of them shared a single employer] – having “thrown a wobbly” and resigned in a huff from his job and spent the afternoon in a pub.
It isn’t long before the two couples get together to discuss the ramifications of Tom losing his job and then he and Barbara making their decision to “go country”.
A couple of scenes and an indeterminate passage of time later, we are presented with Barbara apparently milking a (very-obviously puppet) sheep or goat [it very clearly looked like a sheep to me, however – I am informed by someone who thinks she knows – it was in fact intended to be a goat] in her kitchen, she and Tom are making their own bread and cheese … and Margot (played by Preeya Kalidas) then pops in, apparently on her way to a lesson with the “hot” new Spanish coach at their local tennis club.
Another gap in time later, and the Leadbetters have apparently now moved in with the Goods because of a disaster somehow caused by the Goods’ sheep/goat in their kitchen that has rendered their own home temporarily uninhabitable.
By this time Tom’s pregnant (off stage) pig is about to give birth to four – no, it is five(?) … or even eight(?!) – piglets.
Cue general confusion and the injection of actors Nigel Betts (playing four parts in all – businessman Andrew Ferguson, Harry the Pigman, a policeman and Doctor Joe ) and Tessa Churchyard (playing three – Andrew Ferguson’s wife, a female Milkman and Mary the receptionist).
The drama reaches its climax when one of the piglets – the runt of the litter – stops breathing and there follows a frantic farce-like chaos as confusion reigns and everyone runs around trying to save its life.
It all ends well. (That is to say this element of the plot does).
I am not one who takes any delight in putting the boot into those creatives who live and work in the worlds of theatre and film, but this new stage version of The Good Life, if not ill-conceived in the first place, has unfortunately been “realised” in a cack-handed and unsatisfying manner.
I don’t blame the actors – of them probably Hound and Kalidas the best on the night – because, one or two gags aside, their material was sufficiently inferior and patchy that they hadn’t a lot to play with. [Having said that, I do wonder why they or their agents hadn’t spotted the issues from reading the scripts in the first place].
Sorry, folks.
POSTSCRIPT
I noted after, completing my review, that I am not the only critic who came to the view I did.
See here for the effort of James Butler as published on 1st December in the – PORTSMOUTH NEWS
