The Brits love
broad, bawdy humor, especially on their telly: Monty Python, Benny Hill,
Blackadder all made their way across the pond and into the hearts (or the
gall bladders) of comedy starved, public television loving Americans. Theatre
On Fire experienced wild success staging Richard Curtis and Ben Elton’s
BLACKADDER (Season 2) a while back and fans have been clamoring for more ever
since. So in celebration of the 25th anniversary of Season 4 (which
ended the franchise), TOF is presenting that very season of BLACKADDER GOES
FORTH LIVE! (@ Charlestown Working Theatre through May 11th).
You may recall
Season 2 had Blackadder fending off Elizabethan foes. He’s aged a bit for
Season 4, which advances a mere three hundred years. Now Blackadder is fending
off Germans and trying to keep from getting killed on the battlefield. The same
absurd characters cross the boundaries of time to confound and obstruct
Blackadder at every turn. Happily, (most of) the same actors director Darren
Evans herded together for the previous production are back in the TOF fold for
this incarnation.
The comedy is
lame, demented, sophomoric slapstick. You just give yourself over to it and
surrender. You won’t stop laughing for a minute and laughter is indeed the best
medicine. I dare say that all your internal organs will be refreshed by the
endorphins, not just your brain. Who could resist an aerial dogfight performed
with go-cart scale planes attached to pilots like hoop skirts, swooping and
diving about the stage. (I’m giggling just writing about it.)
Curtis and Elton
get to interject some cautionary lessons about colonialism and war into this
season along with the belly laughs. The lieutenant thinks they’ll do a little
fighting, then it’s “home in time for tea and medals.” Captain Blackadder knows
better about the military mindset: “[They’ve] gone to too much trouble to not
have a war,” he says wistfully. Director Evans mines every chortle there is in
the material but he can turn the tone of the piece on a dime to change the
mood, not an easy task when we’re waiting for a cheeky punch line.
TOF splits the
entire final season of BLACKADDER into two parts, three episodes in each which
means two different nights to choose from. You can see both in any order or
just one without any order at all. In fact, BLACKADDER elevates disorder to new
heights. It’s a wonder the Allies won the war, given all the confusion behind
enemy lines.
Craig Houk is
simply beyond reproach as Blackadder. Once you’ve seen him, you will forget
Rowan Atkinson entirely. (You can conjure Atkinson up in lots of other movies.
It’s not a hardship.) When you see Christopher Sherwood Davis (as the naïve
lieutenant) widen those eyes in authentic British astonishment, you just can’t
wait for him to be awestruck again. Chris Wagner, thank heavens, returns as the
ever so dim, non-hygienic “breath monster” whose chief raison d’être is to get in everyone’s way.
John Geoffrion’s
Captain Darling is so wonderfully “stiff upper lip” that I suspect he’s either
British or he has served in the RAF. Jason Beals repeats his spectacular
entrance from season 2 (which I can’t give away but I can guarantee you’ll be
wowed). Michael Steven Costello blusters his way through the war as a wacky,
deluded general and Terrence P. Haddad provides a surfeit of maniacal German
sneer as Baron von Richthoven. Terry Torres may or may not be a spy and Chelsea
Schmidt may or may not be a nurse.
Production
values are sky high in TOF’s BLACKADDER with spiffy military costumes from Eric
Propp, nifty trench/tent/HQ sets from Luke J. Sutherland, evocative battlefront
lighting from Eric Jacobsen and fabulous wearable planes by John J. King. I
think they may catch on. Project Runway, look out!