Barmy Britain, review: 'I'd rather submit to the rack than watch this again'
‘We’ve played the West End, we’ve played Broadway, we’ve played Sydney Opera House… but nothing compares to a Henley car park.” You’ve got to laugh, I suppose. Horrible Histories – the publishing phenomenon built on purveying bucket-loads of factual nuggets drenched in gore – has always led the way in turning the worst of times to commercial advantage. Now, after more than 80 titles, with international sales figures running to millions, a much-loved and lucrative CBBC series and multiple stage spin-offs since 2005, it’s playing its barmy part in alleviating the nation’s theatrical famine.
Back in the olden days, in January, the suggestion that a small stage and a not-so-massive screen with a gaggle of vehicles arrayed before them would constitute the closest thing available to a live theatre experience would have sounded as ridiculous as the idea of Queen Victoria performing cartwheels. But here we are: Covid-19 and social distancing have wreaked Cromwellian havoc on the playhouses, and it must be recorded for posterity that at the weekend this new ‘drive-in’ touring version of Barmy Britain, a comedy which ran at the Garrick in 2012, was the country’s biggest (and probably only) “show”. At Henley, on a field beside the Thames, this marked the first time since lockdown that actors had cavorted in the flesh.
I wish I could sound a louder horn of gratitude for the quick-changing, goof-balling double-act of Neal Foster (head of Birmingham Stage Company, co-writer and director here too) and Morgan Philpott. They gave us terrible Tudors, vile Victorians and the like in a mock-patriotic resume of bygone Blighty (from Boadicea to Burke and Hare). But I emerged after an hour (enough time, on a warm day, to leave a spectator sizzling) relieved that the end of the road for this soulless new genre is already nigh. With outdoor performances finally permitted again, as of Saturday, this option of watching through the windscreen (with car radio tuned in for audio), should soon become an unhappy memory of the new century’s annus horribilis.
That said, scheduled to head our way in August is the drive-in version of the musical Six – whose loud swarm of street-witty and casually scholarly songs about Henry VIII’s spouses may well marry with the honk-if-you’re-having-fun format more successfully. In terms of rousing youthful curiosity about the past, Horrible Histories (the brainchild of Terry Deary) works better on the page – a cheeky counterblast to tedious textbooks – than the stage, where its bouncy castle approach to horrid deeds of yore can feel weightless. Whereas Six conducts surprisingly astute psychological excavations, Barmy Britain wallows in shallow explanations and trite schoolboy humour.
If you’re willing to part with £30 to sit in your motor and listen to groaners such as “How do you woo?’ I’m very well thank you, how do you woo?”, take part in a Queen-esque sing-along about Boadicea (“She will, she will, smash you!) and be party to an epidemic of fart jokes (“Now I understand the two-metre rule!”), then this may be the midsummer madness you’re after. It gets families out of the house, I suppose, but sensible and inattentive children alike may well be bored out of their skulls by it. Personally, I’d rather submit to the rack than watch it again.
Touring to August. Tickets: carparkparty.com
