My partner couldn’t join me for Francis Veber’s The Painkiller last night as she was at the theatre elsewhere. She had gone to see a play by another French writer, Jean Genet’s The Maids, at Trafalgar Studios. In an ideal world The Painkiller should have been at the Trafalgar – it used to be the Whitehall Theatre, London’s home of farce. And there isn't a more farcical – in a Good Way – play in the West End at the moment than this romp starring Kenneth Branagh and Rob Brydon.
There was a point halfway through a succession of knockabout scenes, door-slamming and mistaken identities when I thought to myself they’ve done everything in the genre but drop their trousers. And then they dropped their trousers. Despite a passing reference to terrorism it really could have been 1969, the year this play was first performed.
Brydon plays dim suicidal photographer Brian Dudley, Branagh plays cool hitman “John Smith”. They simultaneously check into adjacent rooms in a hotel but their lives soon become intertwined when Dudley tries to hang himself and Smith gets injected with ketamine and then amphetamine (don’t ask). The action is fast and furious as they shuttle from room to room via interconnecting doors – invariably banging someone’s nose on the way.
The mayhem is deftly directed by Sean Foley and the script has some neatly corny lines, but it is the performances that keep this moving throughout its brisk 90 minutes without an interval (note to the theatre - please make everyone aware there is no interval at the outset. The chap next to me in the very centre of the stalls was holding his bladder after an hour and cracked and left about 2 minutes before the end. I was worried he might drop his own trousers).
It is probably no surprise that the versatile Branagh can do physical comedy. There are plenty of laughs to be had when he is drugged and stumbles rubber-legged around the stage, rides his suitcase or has a chaotic fist fight with a copper. I wasn’t sure about his accent though. Who knew that ketamine makes you speak like Benny Hill doing a Chinaman?
Brydon is (he’ll like this) simply brilliant, even if (he won’t like this) his deluded cuckold Brian is not a million miles away from his deluded cuckold Keith Barret that triggered his BBC breakthrough 15 years ago. He has the best lines and delivers them excellently. And he also does his fair share of fallabout comedy. He also showed his instinctive quickfire comic chops during a prop failure. When the old school landline came unplugged during a call he speedily ad libbed “cordless”.
I was also particularly impressed at the way Brydon held his stomach in when he was down to his pants and on all fours in a frantic fight scene with a doctor played by TV regular Alex Macqueen. This was one of the moments that got a gutbusting huge laugh. A lot of laughs, it has to be said, came from the camp physicality of the piece. Mark Hadfield did some gold standard mincing as the hotel porter who seemed to have a habit of walking in on his guests when they were in what looked like gay horseplay but was actually a comedic fight.
There are more subtle moments of comedy too. Early on Branagh and Brydon echoed each others movements in front of an imaginary full length mirror. It’s an old Groucho Marx gag but well worth doing again and could have gone on for longer. But this is a piece that doesn’t hang around. It hits the ground running and doesn’t let up.
It is an unashamedly backward-looking play to put on in the West End in 2016 and I assume it was Branagh’s choice as his company is staging it. But given that it was sold out and the BBC is currently remaking Are You Being Served? and Porridge there is clearly a ready market for retro comedy. Leave your brains in the cloakroom, The Painkiller is pure harmless fun.
Until April 30. Tickets here.
Picture by Johan Persson.
