Steptoe and Son, Lyric Hammersmith.

(left at the interval)

It is a promising start with an interesting set dominated by a large wooden cart belonging to the scrap business the father and son run. The cart is also the living area with a bed on top. That’s all the positive which can be found from it. The whole play is made up of 30 minutes “episodes” which feels disjointed and lack cohesion. The humour was a elementary and slapstick unsophisticated and always play to cheap laughs. One example of it was when the rotund Dean Nolan does the splits during a dance routine. Firstly, I do not quite understand why the whole play is intersperse with dancing, Secondly, disregarding the merit of the flexibility of the actor, it is rather derogatory to play on the audience’s expectations of what a larger gentleman is or isn’t capable of and play it for laughs. I can see the reason to revive this 60s BBC sitcom as although billed as comedy, there is a darkness which runs through the relationship between the father and son seen in more recent comedy such as The League of Gentleman. However, this deeper point is not really enough to justify a rather shallow play with dated jokes and also not an excuse to bring out some 60s music and dance moves. We left at the interval.