Joy Watters reviews 'a little gem of entertainment'.
Pitlochry heads into the festive season with an autumn production delightfully merging farce and satire. Just the ticket for lifting the spirits and keeping the winter blues away.
Adapted from Graham Greene’s celebrated novel, this stage adaptation by actor/writer Clive Francis uses just four actors to take on over three dozen roles in this tale of espionage in the exotic climes of Cuba.
Director Richard Baron has got form for this kind of treat, including Greene’s Travels with my Aunt and The 39 Steps by John Buchan. Our Man in Havana is slick and very funny on many levels, be it sheer daftness, but the production never obliterates the wry commentary that characterises Greene’s work.
It tells the tale of vacuum salesman Wormold (Andrew Loudon) who needs money to support the luxurious tastes of his teenage daughter. The political climate is such that he becomes an agent for the British government, receiving nice wodges of cash for his intelligence.
The trouble is that Wormold has fabricated it all, but events take a baffling turn as some of his fiction merges into reality. His bosses back home smell a rat and a hectic train of events is set in motion.
Loudon has a nice air of insouciance turning to panic. The three other actors that people his world are like quick change artists, deftly slipping into a new character in seconds. Jessica Guise does the distaff side from self-possessed teenager to stripper with tremendous brio while Roger Delves-Broughton takes on mystery men to senior spook revelling in the strangeness of each new character. Steven McNicoll clowns his way through a wonderful selection of odd bods with a series of accents that take us round the world.
All in all, it’s a little gem of entertainment.
At Pitlochry Festival Theatre until November 14.
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