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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