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London,
Evening Standard rating
Reader rating
Dir: Alan Cohen.
Cast: Sarah Crowe, Andrew C Wadsworth, William Hoyland, Alex Bartram, Richard Keith, Katie Beard
Description: Controversial new sex farce written by Toby Young and Lloyd Evans, set in an imaginary future just after the Queen's death, in which Prince Harry makes a bid for the crown. Directed by Alan Cohen.
Andrew C Wandsworth appears as Prince Charles in the awful sendup A Right Royal Farce
Only people with an appetite for rank theatrical rubbish will want to gorge themselves on this relentlessly boring little farce by Toby Young and Lloyd Evans.
Dismiss all memories of that artful huffing and puffing in advance of the first night by publicists, who hinted the authors had put living royalty up for controversial mockery by making them fun figures in a sex romp.
Actually A Right Royal Farce has all the shock-value of a pair of pubertal schoolboys caught fiddling with each other in the bike shed.
Hard upon the Queen's demise, Richard Keith's neither thick nor thuggish Prince Harry schemes like Shakespeare's Richard III, though without the laughs, to steal the throne from both his father and brother. After no end of plotting, of an unamusing and contrived sort, he comes unstuck.
Alex Bartram's amazingly lookalike, sympathetic William is restored to his rightful place as the farce, which ought to reach heights of climactic lunacy like the classic See How They Run at the Duchess, fizzles out. Few shows of such embarrassing, authorial ineptitude can have hit the London stage since the Blitz.
When it comes to embarrassment or bad taste, though, Young and Evans, who cocked several successful snooks at David Blunkett's sex life in last year's far better Who's the Daddy, score a bull's-eye.
The authors depict William as a doped, unstable nut-house candidate, who is dragged off to the funny farm after Harry has his own Australian girlfriend masquerade as Diana, speaking to her older son from Heaven. This plotting device strikes me as a mirthless, unpleasant exploitation of the Prince's grief for his dead mother.
Christopher Woods's cheap set, with its monogrammed carpet and gilt walls, with champagne bottles stacked on the floor, looks a suitably caricatured version of the real Palace.
Young and Evans, whose biggest success as farce writers is their obliteration of the intelligence, command and humour that they display as Spectator theatre critics, never manage to create any farcical momentum or classic spiral of panic or even sharp dialogue. Farce at its best is a wild offshoot from real life, not here.
Harry plots for the crown. One of his efforts involves dressing up as the Archbishop of Canterbury to deceive Andrew C Wadsworth's daft, simple, plant-hugging Charles into renouncing the throne. This characteristic scene could not be less funny.
Alan Cohen's slack production, with sudden black-outs, offers dull, far from pointed caricatures of members of the Firm. William Hoyland's prowling, priapic Duke of Edinburgh roves stylishly about and beds Sara Crowe's ridiculously vamping affected Camilla, then tries his luck with Harry's mysteriously Australian girlfriend Anoushka (Katie Beard).
Philip's exploits distract attention from the main succession business. The Duke may have one gorgeous, suitably acerbic line, when he mentions one of the African leaders of whom he has inquired 'Have you eaten any members of the opposition recently?'
Otherwise, though, A Right Royal Farce has all the bite and provocation of a toothless old corgi.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
Here's a sample of the latest reviews published.
Farce is definitely the right word for this pile of nonsense by Toby Young and Lloyd Evans. Set in Buckingham Palace, the plot (and I use the term very loosley) centres on Prince Harry scheming to take over the throne by getting William committed to a lunatic asylum. Expect a lot of innuendo about Harry's connection to James Hewitt, CAmilla having an affair with her father-in-law Philip and lots of ridiculous running in and out of bedrooms.
It falls so flat that I'm struggling to say anything good about it but, at a push, I suppose the actors playing Charles and Camilla did a pretty good job under the circumstances.
I made a point of going because I'd really enjoyed Toby Young's last few theatrical offerings - Who's The Daddy, about the tangled love lives of the staff at The Spectator, and the stage version of his book How to Lose Friends And Alienate People, about his time as a journalist on Vanity Fair.
But he really let me down with this one. Seriously, it was cringe-makingly bad, so avoid it at all costs folks.
- Laura, London, W2
