Tell ‘Em, Mike!
Attention! Stop talking in the ranks back there! Captain Mainwaring is back to keep his ragbag Home Guard platoon in line for another run at Wilton’s Music Hall in Dad’s Army Radio Show, writes Michael Holland.
Warmington-on-Sea’s finest are depicted getting in and out of several high-jape scrapes in three half-hour episodes taken from numerous radio show scripts and adapted by David Benson and Jack Lane who – miraculously – play every character.
Dressed in army fatigues, army boots and just a couple of enamel mugs, Benson and Lane stood behind two replica BBC radio microphones and brought to life all the usual Dad’s Army regulars with both voice and mannerisms. David Benson merely had to raise an eyebrow or perform an eye-roll and we knew he was John Le Mesurier. An harrumph from Lane set us up for an Arthur Lowe gem as Captain Mainwaring.
Each impression was done with a love and affection for those who had made the parts their own; each line delivered with the respect that the writers, David Croft and Jimmy Perry, have earned. There was no caricature or lampooning here, the Dad’s Army Radio Show is one of deep respect for the people that made it happen and an audience who still want to see and hear their heroes.
I sat open-mouthed as the pair manifested crowd scenes of a dozen or more, with alternating lines from Privates Godfrey, Pike, Walker and Frazer, Sergeant Wilson, a dithery Lance Corporal Jones, a blustering Reverend with a face-pulling verger, and Mainwaring trying to keep a tight ship while being undermined by Air Raid Warden Hodges. They would do the women too: Mrs Pike, Mrs Fox and Sylvia, Hodges’ niece who once tried to get Pike into trouble. I looked on in awe as they created a mêlée of commotion as the cast tried to organise a Christmas bazaar in The Love of Three Oranges, or prepare for manoeuvres in The Making of Private Pike.
David Benson gets to soak up the limelight as the old Scot Private Frazer in The Miser’s Hoard, but honours are equally shared in this evening of wonderment, amusement and entertainment.
I did wonder, however, how this would be enjoyed by people who did not know the BBC series, the radio shows or any of the characters. A young couple in front of us looked around in puzzlement every time the audience burst into cheers or laughter for when they must have thought nothing was really happening on the stage, but it could have been Jack Lane uttering the iconic ‘Stupid boy’ phrase that did it. And I’m sure they thought my companion had something wrong with her when she broke out into giggles whenever Benson pulled a face that we instantly knew was Edward Sinclair’s Verger. But by the end it was clearly obvious they had a great time.
It was that kind of night, an evening of nostalgic memories and laughs, and a not a little poignancy when we knew these three episodes had been adapted because they had good parts for Private Pike, and that Ian Lavender, the actor who first brought him into our lives, passed away earlier this year; the last of the cast to leave this world.
But Dad’s Army will live on as long as David Benson and Jack Lane continue to march onto a stage.
Wilton’s Music Hall, Graces Alley, London E1 8JB until 22nd June. Times: 7.30pm; Thur & Sat matinees 2.30pm. Admission: £25, £10.50.
Booking: www.wiltons.org.uk – https://www.dadsarmyradioshow.co.uk/
