Theatre Preview - The Ladykillers

Nobody hurts Mrs Lopsided.

Newsflash - from 5th to 15th July members of Tower Theatre Company will be performing Graham Linehan's adaptation of The Ladykillers at the Gatehouse Theatre, Highgate, London. Hopefully it will be wildly funny and entertaining. That's for others to say, not me - 'cos I'm in it. So rather than discuss the prospective merits of the Tower version, let me provide you with a brief overview of Ladykilling history. 

The original film version of The Ladykillers was produced by Ealing Studios in 1955, the last of the classic 'Ealing Comedies'. Ever since my first viewing it's featured on my Desert Island Films list - one of the eight I'd take with me if I were marooned in the Tropics with a Blu-ray and a decent solar-powered surround sound system. Why do I love this quaint British comedy so much? Well largely because its quaintness belies something dark and deliciously subversive. 

This quintessentially English tale was written by the American William Rose and directed by America-born Alexander Mackendrick, two possible reasons why it transcends its old-fashioned North London trappings to become something very different. The story is of five bank robbers planning a heist while masquerading as a musical quintet, having rented rooms from ostensibly sweet and fragile widow Mrs Wilberforce. But Mrs W proves much more doughty than the thieves anticipate, resulting in all manner of grim consequences. 

The film's delights are plentiful - the eccentricity of Mrs Wilberforce's wonky dwelling, the contrast between her chintzy world and the ultra-shadowy one of the crooks, the physical comedy sparked by her bad-natured parrot General Gordon. Most memorable, however, are the gleeful characterisations of the gang and their elderly nemesis. The villains are a fabulous range of archetypes - borderline-insane mastermind, gentleman criminal, dim-witted muscleman, cocky spiv and sinister assassin (played by notables including Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers and Herbert Lom). They're also mis-matched and ludicrously incompetent, while still managing to be deeply threatening - a tribute to performance and murky cinematography. 

As for the darling old lady - in reality she's hard-as-nails spirit-of-the-British-Empire, to the point of parody. One scene that doesn't make it to the stage adap has her interfering in a dispute between tradesmen, inadvertently ending several careers as the cons look on aghast. There's something quietly formidable about 'Mrs Lopsided'.

The Ladykillers is a beautiful oddity of a film, one which captured the imaginations of the Coen Brothers, whose remake came out in 2005. Their version is a curio all its own - transferring the story to America's Deep South and casting Tom Hanks as the gang's leader. Katie Jones' sweet old lady from the original becomes a hectoring church-woman played by Irma P Hall. It's that rarity in the Coens' canon - a semi-failure, albeit an interesting one. Something crucial seems lost in translation. Much of the original film's joy existed in its post-War English setting, with all aspects of story and background deeply familiar to the audience, but given a subtly demented twist. Best keep it there.

Graham Linehan got that, with his 2011 Ladykillers stage play. All the key elements are preserved - period setting, sly characterisations and story beats. (Even General Gordon makes it into the script.) Cunning writing and inventive stagecraft are used to convey the exterior scenes without the action moving once from Mrs Wiberforce's home. 

But the creator of Father Ted, Black Books and the IT Crowd has added much from his own febrile comic imagination. The entire script is reworked - it's sillier and more surreal, and laced with additional character quirks. The relative restraint of the film's humour is replaced with something very different - wild slapstick in the opening act, before a nosedive into pitch-dark farce later on. Linehan's love of the source material remains apparent throughout, but the comedy anarchist who brought us Mrs Doyle, Maurice Moss and Bernard Black grinds his unique stamp into the stage experience. 

The results could and should be hilarious. It's now up to us at Tower to deliver. Our efforts will be noble, I assure you - and on view over the dates mentioned above, at the specified location. Come and see if we can take the vision of Rose and Linehan - and bring The Ladykillers to glorious, dark-hearted life.