Withnail & I, The Rep, Birmingham, 14 May, on ’till 25 May 2024. Running time 2hrs 15 mins with interval. 3✩✩✩ Review: David Gray

Photo Credit: Manuel Harlan.

Withnail & I, The Rep, Birmingham, 14 May, on ’till 25 May 2024. Running time 2hrs 15 mins with interval.

3✩✩✩ Review: David Gray

“Film to stage adaptation that loses much in translation.”

Plays often get turned into films. Films less often make it to the stage, and when they do, it tends to be in musical form. There is a reason for this. Live stage performance offers an immediacy of experience that film cannot. However, film provides a wealth of detail, a narrative sweep, and a close-up intimacy with the actors that cannot always be achieved on the stage.

Stage adaptations, therefore, in the absence of the above, mercilessly expose the strength or weakness of a script and story to more rigorous scrutiny than is the case on the screen. In this stage adaptation, the dialogue stands up well; it has sharp wit with plenty of belly laughs. The play moves at a pace in the form of short vignette-like scenes. This is facilitated by a brilliantly fluid staging from designer Alice Power. And the characters are vividly drawn.

The story, however, stands up less well and seems rather thin: boys are exhausted by dissipated lifestyle; boys travel to the country and meet local colour; boy fends off unwanted advances of elderly man; boys go home; one boy then goes to Manchester; The End. The short punchy scenes stand well on their own, but fail to coalesce into a convincing narrative whole.

The reworking might have been more successful if the creative team had done more to recognise that film and stage are very different mediums and had delivered a play that works on its own merits. Instead, they give us a live facsimile of writer, Bruce Robinson’s celluloid classic. The costumes, the scenes, and the train of events, are all slavish copies of their screen counterparts. It is an homage rather than an adaptation.

As a result Robert Sheehan plays Richard E Grant playing Withnail, but with the volume turned up. Adonis Siddique manages to find more of an individual interpretation in his reading of Marwood. But the First Act is over-delivered in a constant state of near hysteria with everyone trying too hard to live up to the audience’s high expectations.

Act II calms down somewhat. Malcolm Sinclair brings a steadying influence as Uncle Monty. Less physically akin to the film’s Richard Griffiths, he seems more liberated to find his own character. His is a smooth, louche, and surprisingly sympathetic Uncle Monty.

At the end, however, the lack of zoomed-in detail that the camera can provide means the characters feel distant and difficult to connect with. So why care what happens to them?

Cast

Withnail – Robert Sheehan

And I (Marwood) - Adonis Saddique

Uncle Monty – Alistair Sinclair

Danny – Adam Young

Presuming Ed – Israel J. Fredericks

Wanker/Jake The Poacher & Band – Morgan Philpott

Farmer/Colonel & Band – Matt Devitt

Geezer/Policeman & Band – Adam Sopp

Miss Blenehassitt/Policewoman & Band – Sooz Kempner

Creatives

Written by – Bruce Robinson

Director – Sean Foley

Designer – Alice Power

Lighting – Jessica Hung Han Yun

Sound Design & Composition – Ben and Max Ringham

Video Design – Akhila Krishnan