Another day off yesterday, and by God did our costumes need it. Vigourous dry-cleaning and washing ensued. And then, entirely unexpectedly, a fabulous review in Metro:
The Elephant Woman
Monster of a hit
The team behind Fringe hit The Wicker Woman once more stake their claim to be the heirs of Python and the Cambridge Footlights when the Cambridge Footlights was still funny, this time with a complete reworking of David Lynch's moody black-and-white tale of funfair freak turned London sophisticate John Merrick.
They are comedy parodists of the first order whose day in the sun of TV stardom is surely long overdue.
A riot from start to finish, this is as side-splittingly funny a slice of ad hoc Victoriana as you could wish to see.
It's a simple tale - boy meets freak, boy gets freak, boy loses freak - and one crammed full of puns, buns, slapstick semantics and malapropisms so tasty you can see why the cast can't wait to get their teeth into them.
Farcical, risible and just downright laugh-out-loud funny - this is a show with a ventriloquist baby, featuring Oscar Wilde as an unreconstructed Northern comic and a woman whose ability to put on a bit of lippy and mascara while still wearing a bag over her head has to be seen to be believed.
I haven't had as much fun since... well, I can't tell you how long it's been. Mockingly self-aware, The Elephant Woman takes its limitations and wears them on its trunk with pride. As Dr Professor Treves says of his elephantine lady love, his mission 'is to turn the creature you see before you into a real half-human being'. But the real triumph here is turning a half-baked idea into a fully formed hit.
Alan Chadwick
(Apologies to any young Footlighters out there for the first paragraph. Indeed, I hear the show this year is actually rather good. But hey, we've all been through it.)