Trevor Griffiths's exploration of the proximity of comedy to social prejudice has got a bit creaky since its huge success, nearly a quarter of a century ago, festooned with then icons of Music Hall comedians in the lead roles. Even then it was apparent that the play would not become a permanent classic of the canon of English theatre, if only because it was so topically English at the time. But it was a hugely fashionable and popular success at that juncture.
Bickerstaffe Theatre Company's production of it, vigorously directed by Jimmy Fay in a grittily realistic set by Monica Frawley of a breeze-block concrete-walled schoolroom in Manchester, demonstrates much of its original energy but underlines (however inadvertently) how much it has aged.
Retired veteran comedian Eddie Waters is running classes for would-be comedians and we find the class on the evening when they are to try out their acts in a break in the bingo session in the local hall, to be viewed by another veteran comic, Bert Challoner, who will assess whether any of them are worth a leg up the professional ladder.
We start in the classroom with Eddie and the lads discussing the socio-philosophic background against which they must make their audience laugh, and go on to the performances, in which they must impress Bert. Then there is the post-mortem and the issuing of offers by him to those whom he thinks may be worth a leg-up. And then we go home, maybe knowing a little more about each of the lads and with a few insights into the nature of comedy.
Timothy Kightly is the teacher of sociology and comedy who doesn't really believe there are any more jokes in the world since he witnessed the holocaust of World War II when touring with ENSA at that war's end. As the six would-be comics, Jonathan White (very funny indeed) and David Parnell (necessarily more unhappy than comic) are the brothers who fight within their double act; Dan Gordon is the funny man from Northern Ireland; Aidan Kelly the inexperienced comic from Dublin; while Philip Judge is the archetypal Jewish joke-teller and Karl Shiels the angry young man who insists on the truth and to hell with laughs. Brian de Salvo is Bert, who may or may not hold their futures in his briefcase.
Between them, they provide an energetic, mildly comical and thoughtful, if dated, evening.