As The Pub Landlord, stand-up comic Al Murray is a very funny man. As Charles II in Simon Nye’s pastiche Restoration farce, not so much.
In Carolinian finery and a curly wig covering his follicle-free zone, Murray delivers his lines in garbled posh, referring to the Royal regalia as “The Crine Jools” and stepping in and out of character in a show that is half history play, half stand up revue.
Nye’s script is based on the unlikely but historically accurate account of the attempt by Irish seditionist Colonel Thomas Blood (Aidan McArdle) to steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London.
He and his accomplices, Captain Perrot (Neil Morrissey) and Tom Blood Jr (Joe Thomas) were caught and destined for the gallows before Charles had a change of heart.
Instead of being hanged for treason, Blood was pardoned and awarded a pension by the King whose mercy was motivated more by political expediency than altruism.
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A handful of bawdy songs from Carrie Hope Fletcher’s Lady of the Bedchamber punctuate the action and Murray doubles as the ageing Talbot Edwards, Keeper of the King’s Jewels, who is stabbed during the robbery but survives to hobble back into the arms of his not-so-loving wife (Mel Giedroyc).
To call this farrago a cross between a Carry On film and a panto would be insulting to both and I was minded to recall Lysander’s line towards the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard”.
Murray and Giedroyc work the audience well but it’s not nearly enough to save this punishingly painful ragamuffin of a play.
The Crown Jewels, Garrick Theatre until September 16. Tickets: 0330 333 4811
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