SCRUTINY | Shaw Festival’s One Man, Two Guvnors Is Pure Entertainment

Shaw Festival 2024/ One Man, Two Guvnors by Richard Bean, directed by Chris Abraham, Festival Theatre, closes Oct. 13. Tickets here.

The laugh out loud farce, One Man, Two Guvnors, by British playwright Richard Bean, takes us back to the glory days of the late lamented actor Heath Lamberts, farceur supreme.

In Lamberts, the Shaw Festival had a comedian who could tackle the dizzying pace of the genre and make it work, which is not an easy thing to do. Whether in the farces of France’s Georges Feydeau, or England’s Ben Travers, Lamberts made us laugh until we cried. (FYI, it was Lamberts, in his memorable one-man show, who coined the phrase, Niagara-on-the-Take.)

Lamberts must be looking down from heaven, because a successor has been found. In Peter Fernandes, who plays the hapless Francis Henshall, the one man who is serving two bosses, we have a comic actor of exquisite timing whose physicality and facial expressions are always in play. The man is not only a firestorm of energy, he is hilarity in motion. Even standing still, he makes us laugh, as did the beloved Lamberts.

The source for Richard Bean’s One Man, Two Guvnors (2011), is the famous 1743 commedia dell’arte play, The Servant of Two Masters, by Italy’s Carlo Goldoni. Whereas commedia began as improvised street theatre with masked stock characters, Goldoni formalized the genre by writing it down. As such, he was very influential in the history of comedy because he made his characters more realistic rather than static stereotypes, yet, within the presentation of the manners and behaviour of actual life, he kept the exuberant spirit of commedia alive, as has Bean in his play.

The Story

The setting is Brighton, 1963. Commedia always had songs and so does One Man, Two Guvnors. In this case, English composer Grant Olding wrote original tunes for a skiffle band for the original 2011 hit London production, which are performed by cast members before each act, and as scene covers. The very hummable tunes and simple lyrics take us right back to the 1960s, and delightfully so. The band also shows off the considerable music skills of the company.

This being a farce, the story is, of course, very complicated, too much so to be written down. It has to be experienced. Suffice it to say, Bean has placed his characters in the small time criminal underworld of Brighton, which adds to the humour.

Commedia had lazzi, or what we would today call schticks, or stock comic routines, and director Chris Abraham, a well-known man of comedy himself, has included a riotous bunch in this production. The absolute funniest is the geriatric waiter Alfie, performed by Matt Alfano, who must have been an acrobat in another life, given what he puts his body through. Here’s a hint: it involves stairs.

The running joke for our anti-hero Francis (Fernandes) is that he is very hungry. He can’t eat because his first boss, Rachel Crabbe (Fiona Byrne), in disguise as her dead brother Roscoe, hasn’t paid him so he can’t buy anything. His search for food in all the wrong places is another great schtick in the play.

Then there is the audience involvement, which is screamingly funny, and which I will not divulge. I will, however, give this warning. Be careful if you’re sitting in the front row.

The Production

The actors includes some notable company members who all look like they are having fun. They include Martin Happer as imperially correct Stanley Stubbers, Francis’ other boss, Tom Rooney as set upon minor criminal Charlie Clench, Jade Repeta as Clench’s dimwitted daughter Pauline, André Morin as Pauline’s equally dimwitted wannabe actor fiancé Alan Dangle, Patrick Galligan as Alan’s pompous lawyer father Harry Dangle, Kiera Sangster as Charlie’s over-sexed bookkeeper Dolly, Allan Louis as Roscoe hanger-on Lloyd Boateng, late of Brixton prison, and Graeme Somerville as the supercilious waiter Gareth.

The production values are first rate. Julie Fox’s sets and costumes lovingly evoke the Sixties, aided by Kimberly Purtell’s flashy lighting. As for director Abraham, he has squeezed out every possible laugh from wherever he could find it, sometimes in the most surprising places.

Of course One Man, Two Guvnors is silly, but it’s a farce after all. Audience members have to leave their brains at the door, tuck their intellects away, and just come to be entertained.

And Shaw artistic director Tim Carroll, are you listening? You have to find more farces for Peter Fernandes, and bring back that much-missed festival tradition.

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Paula Citron is a Toronto-based freelance arts journalist and broadcaster who hosts her own website, paulacitron.ca. For over 25 years, she was senior dance writer for The Globe and Mail, associate editor of Opera Canada magazine, arts reviewer for Classical 96.3 FM, and dance previews contributor to Toronto Life magazine. She has been a guest lecturer for various cultural groups and universities, particularly on the role of the critic/reviewer, and has been a panellist on COC podcasts. Before assuming a full-time journalism career, Ms. Citron was a member of the drama department of the Claude Watson School for the Arts.

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