Saturday 31 May 1997

Underneath the Arches, May 31, 1997


By Jon Finlayson & Jon Stephens
at Capers Dinner Restaurant until June 28, 1997
Reviewed by Kate Herbert around May 29, 1997

How many other people who did not live through the war know all the words to Underneath the Arches and have no idea how they learned them? Was it old movies, parents, grandparents or is it the universal unconscious?

Comedy is a great barometer of its era. The sweet, funny and poignant songs and sketches of English vaudevillians, Flanagan and Allen, concisely reflect the hardships of Depression, Post-Depression and wartime Britain. It is easy to dismiss them individually as charming but slight tunes but to hear twenty or more songs over an hour is to experience a social and political documentation of the period.

Underneath the Arches is performed by two charming old troupers, Jon Finlayson and Jon Stephens, in a dinner theatre environment. One major difference is that the a la carte food at Capers is terrific.

FInlayson, with his drooping eyes and moustache is Sad-Sack while Stephens is Perky-Boots and they have a delightful rapport as they soft-shoe across the floor engaging in mild and amusing rehearsed and ad-libbed patter. They inject an air of authenticity and joy into the pieces.

Flanagan and Allen played as tramps but their work always dignifies the working- class, the poor or the indigent while it gently criticises and jogs the consciences the wealthy who allow them to sleep underneath the arches.

Each generation thinks it invented comedy but hearing this duo's original routines   one recognises the debt owed by The Goons, Morcambe & Wise, Monty Python and others bent toward the ridiculous. Comedy has a history and even these guys did not begin it.

Flanagan's (Finlayson) wordplays and malapropisms are wildly silly. "I'm going a-plank, a-wood, Aboard! Aboard! Oy, Oy, Oy!"  The duo began on stage in 1926 then transferrred routines to radio and later, during the war, became stalwarts in the Crazy Gang Show entertaining civilians and troops.

The show features immortal tunes such as Two Roving Vagabonds, Any Umbrellas, Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner and Mademoiselle from Armentiers, the only slightly "blue" number.

If you remember them from the war, or you don't remember them but know the songs or if you just want a good meal and a novel nostalgic night, this is a toe-tapping show in comfortable surroundings.
KATE HERBERT  

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