Review | The Lavender Hill Mob at Chichester Festival Theatre: 'Doesn’t hold up well against the original'

The era of the Ealing Comedy was already past when I arrived on the planet but – that said – I am also of the generation that got those films farmed out to us as Sunday-afternoon offerings from the BBC; ideal family fare after Sunday lunch.

The Festival Theatre in Chichester is home, this week, to a touring version of The Lavender Hill Mob and while it may be unfair to compare it to the Ealing original, that comparison is unavoidable.

Sadly, it doesn’t hold up well against that original.

The conceit of the piece is a group of friends acting out the story for a man they – rather randomly – assume to be a film-director.

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The programme biographies show this is a well-trained, well-experienced and very capable cast, so any accusing finger for the lack of quality has to be pointed elsewhere. One can’t help but feel that the adaptation of the original Ealing script might be at fault – the characters it delivers are just not real people – and one cannot help but feel that directorially it smacks of a puerile university footlights company playing, smugly, to their pals.

The sought-for comedy suffers because of some poorly thought-through gags – no vehicle in 1949 signals its reversing with loud beeping and the likelihood of knocking oneself out with one thwack of a tin tray is slim.

Comedy, as tragedy, must be rooted in truth. One can’t help but feel a sense of desperation in struggling for laughs where laughs may not be necessary; let the story do its job.

Act 1 is the weaker; Act 2 has more energy, and the enthusiasm of the cast does, at least, lift the material here to raise more than the few self-conscious laughs produced by the first act.

Until Saturday.