Morecambe

In the very week Storm Brian was lashing the country Lighted Fools Theatre Company was able to sing from the rooftops ‘Bring Me Sunshine’ – with its quite outstanding performance of Tim Whitnall’s bitter sweet play Morecambe.
John Eric Bartholomew and Ernest Wiseman were, of course, the nation’s favourite double comedy act Morecambe and Wise and this one-man show , a tribute to the genius of Morecambe, harks back to those wonderfully simple days when the whole family could join together around the television set for an evening of pure joy, unadulterated by Facebook, Snapchat or any of the other evils of modern social media – but what fun Eric and Ernie might have had out of today’s fickle world.
Is it really thirty three years since Eric ‘danced off into immortality’ to quote director Richard Parish?
Could any one man really bring back to life the genius of Morecambe?
Whitnall ‘s ‘play what I wrote’, Parish’s direction and the entire Lighted Fools Company’s contribution to set design, music, choreography, lighting, sound, wardrobe and props were the foundations for a remarkable performance by that one man – David Webb.
David, no stranger to the Company with twenty one previous plays under his belt, gave, quite simply, a five star performance – and not just as Morecambe but thirty two other characters as well.
He looked the part, he danced the part, he sang the part and after a quite extra-ordinary two hours he quite rightly received a standing ovation from Guildford’s Mill Studio theatre audiences – the first time I have even seen such a reception for a non-professional performance.
Morecambe traces the comedian’s career from childhood until his third and finally fatal heart attack on stage in Tewksbury and along the long and winding way, with its triumphs and disasters, we meet up with everyone from Bruce Forsyth to Ed Sullivan , from Lew Grade to…well , of course, ‘little Ern’.
And that was another string to David Webb’s bow as ventriloquist to Ernie’s dummy – so much so you could almost believe it was Ernie……..almost! Well done to John Tytherleigh for a very look-alike Ernie – for repairing the poor little chap when he fell over during rehearsals and for allowing him out at a local stylists for a pre-show hair-cut!
What fun it was to recall the classics – Andre ‘Preview’ and ‘I’m playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order’, the wonderful business to the tune of ‘The Stripper’ and a hundred other glorious memories.
So what did we did we think of it all so far? Definitely not ‘Rubbish’!

• Type: user
• Performance Date: 21/10/2017
• Star rating: 12345