Sentimental in places, but at times searingly provocative in its humour, challenging its audience to consider how language is used and abused. Rating
Good
The material of Benny Hill reflects its time, and while the telling of the joke may be reframed, the butt often remains the same. Overall, it now poses the fundamental question, ‘are you sitting comfortably?’
What’s Wrong with Benny Hill takes place on a stage with 70s coloured crochet throws, gingham tablecloth, big tube telly and a cassette player. References to Yellow Pages and, perhaps most nostalgically, a Woolworths carrier bag, all hark back to a simpler, more innocent time. A time when pick and mix and broken biscuits were resonant of a post-war era that needed change, and where the condemnation of misogyny, class and racial discrimination was not even on the agenda.
Within this landscape we had fat and jolly Benny Hill, the little boy that never grew up and perhaps like a child had no sense of propriety. The up and down (careful!) of Hill’s career was driven by bawdy humour, and he rode high for at least three decades before petering out and being cancelled – but for what? Being a product of his time was hardly an offence, but he could not escape the rise of the middle-class comics, with their uni education, their absurd stories and their pointed use of irony. Hill had audiences the smart boys would kill for, yet he was both celebrated and vilified; lauded for enormous viewing figures, yet decried for puerile, tawdry sketches. There is a powerful scene in the play where Hill does his caricature of a Chinese person, mispronouncing words and being physically silly but with confident pauses. We squirm, especially when Hill challenges us directly about the humour, and it doesn’t seem so funny now.
There is a stand-alone mic at the side of the stage from where jolly songs are sung, with the performer often looking on stage into Benny’s flat. There he sits alone, drink in hand, TV repeats on, always searching for that elusive joke, that word play, that naughty routine – anything for a laugh. This contrast of actions and atmospheres lifts the play from the ‘ruderous’ seaside postcard to something more erudite, where we consider a more innocent time, when our sensibilities were still dulled by war and poverty. Certainly, there is an interesting examination of class and naivety in the play.
Hill is played with conviction and verve by Mark Carey. He creates a complex character who is outgoing, simply offensive yet innocently endearing; a boy who tags along with his dad and writes regularly to his auntie Lou, a man who implies that he’s not deep but just seeks a laugh with innuendo. Carey is ably supported by Georgie Taylor who plays everyone else, from a liberated female stand-up to Captain Dad, the common man and even Janice from the Office of Wills, with energy and panache.
The play was written by Mark Carey, with music by Oliver Jones, and although it is ‘boobs, blokes and birds’ territory, the script delves interestingly into the arrival of BBC TV, the development of ITV and importantly the progression of Music Hall humour and Variety sketches from stage to screen. Jones’ music has an element of pastiche, with jaunty tunes and easy rhymes (‘humour’ and ‘rumour’). Its country and western feel and its popular tunes, along with its Music Hall recitative quality, makes it all bright and breezy and entertaining.
If you want a glimpse of comedy with a conscience that has not yet been raised, give it a go. What’s Wrong with Benny Hill will leave you laughing, squirming and thinking!
Written by Mark Carey
Music by: Kevin Oliver Jones
Produced by: Giles Shenton
What’s Wrong With Benny Hill plays at White Bear Theatre until Friday 24 January.
