'Allo 'Allo

‘Allo, ‘Allo is based on the long-running TV series of the same name, and writers David Croft and Jeremy Lloyd have managed to bring to the stage all the chaos, confusion and innuendo that we know and love, along with the well-remembered characters. The series is fondly remembered for its farcical humour, slapstick comedy and many catchphrases, so it is harder than you might think to pull off a good re-interpretation of the genre.

Set in a small-town café in Nazi-occupied France, we find owners René and his wife Edith trying to prevent the German army and the Gestapo getting their hands on the painting of the Fallen Madonna with the big you-know-whats, currently hidden inside a sausage. Will they succeed in saving the painting from being presented to Hitler when he visits the town?

Phoenix Players have gone all out to involve the audience as soon as they arrive at the theatre, with members of the cast in costume and character greeting us in the foyer and selling programmes. Nice touch. The stage contained an impressive box set of René’s café with small areas on the front wings for Herr Flick’s office and the larder at the café. This meant that scene changes were swift, and the play moved along at a good pace. Lighting was well designed (Paul Impey and Andy Impey), and the sound and effects (Bailey Smith) were good, and always on cue. Costumes looked really good, thanks to Valerie Bird and TLC Creative (who also supplied the myriad props), especially the uniforms, which looked most authentic.

Director Stine Impey has pulled together an excellent cast and coped well with the need to replace the actor playing René, with just a week to go. Full credit to Kevin Cordell who took on this onerous task and was amazingly fluent in the role, giving it the full characterisation and hardly referring to the script. What an achievement! Jo Webb was spot-on as René’s wife Edith with some wonderfully flat singing, which I’m sure wasn’t natural! Sonia Hill and Amy Dunmall made a great double act as Yvette and Mimi, the two barmaids who are unaccountably attracted to René, and great fun was had with the height difference between Mimi and René. I shall say this only once: Sophie Nickerson made Michelle of the Resistance nicely underhand and greatly annoying to René, who did not want to be mixed up in her scheming; and Bill Furlong completed the French contingent as Leclerc, totally incompetent with his disguises.

Jeremy Fletcher made a wonderfully flamboyant Captain Bertorelli with a great accent and a chicken on his head! Dylan Gover portrayed the vain and incompetent Von Strohm very well, and Chris Wrein’s Otto Flick had just the right amount of threat and nastiness to make us wonder what Sophie Castle’s wonderful Helga saw in him. Steve Penfold’s Gruber had just the right amount of camp and Tony Collins’ Von Schmelling was crisp and authoritarian. Josh Woolmer had mastered Crabtree’s mangling of ‘French’ very well, and Lynda Saunders and Fiona Fiander delighted us each time they popped out from under the counter as the daft British airmen,

As always with this group, the full colour programme was of excellent quality, with good pictures and biographies of the cast and creatives, and information about future shows.

You really have to have some prior knowledge of the characters and situations to fully appreciate the humour, so did they pull it off? Yes, they did - even for the uninitiated, Phoenix Players have brought out the humour in the script so that anyone with a sense of the ridiculous can laugh along and have a jolly good time. Thank you for brightening up our evening!

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