Review: BEDSIDE MANNERS at ARTS Theatre

Reviewed by Barry Lenny, Thursday 3rd November 2022.

Therry Theatre is ending its 2022 season with Derek Benfield's very English 1988 farce, Bedside Manners, directed with great skill by Jude Hines. I grew up watching Brian Rix's Whitehall farces on television every year, around Christmas time, always a family favourite. After everything that we have been through over the last few years, we deserve a good laugh, and that is what a farce can deliver. This one is short, sharp, and shiny, running for only two hours, including the interval.

The play opens with the much-recorded and popular song, There's a Small Hotel, written by Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart and first heard in the 1936 musical, On Your Toes. Its cheerful optimism belies the mayhem that is to come.

Ferris's sister runs a country inn that has seen better days. She has talked him into looking after the place while she is away on holiday, in Frinton, but nothing runs as smoothly as he had expected. It is Spring, the season of love, and two couples, staying in the inn for a 'dirty weekend' cause him all manner of problems, and he causes plenty for them.

Roger has arrived and is waiting for Sally. He is smartly dressed, orders Champagne to be put on ice, and tips Ferris. Geoffrey has arrived and is waiting for Helen. He is scruffily dressed, orders nothing, and fails to tip. Roger, it transpires, is married to Helen and, even more awkwardly, Geoffrey is married to Sally. Both couples are, of course, calling themselves, 'Smith', which only adds to the confusion. Ferris finds himself caught up in the lies and deceptions, trying to keep wives, husbands, and adulterers.

Gary Anderson's set is, of course, an important part of the production, with two identical rooms upstairs, one green, and one blue, separate stairs leading up to each room, a door to the hall, and a door to the bathroom in each room, with archways to the outside and to the dining room on opposite sides of the stage, downstairs. Between the sets of stairs are swing doors through which Ferris comes and goes, with his desk centre stage. Every farce relies upon plenty of entrances and exits for continual narrow escapes. A lot of the movement is generated by the fact that the telephones in the rooms are not working, meaning that the guests have to run around after Ferris to organise room service. It's a typical setup for a farce. The indefatigable Richard Parkhill, who seems to be working almost everywhere, is the lighting designer.

David Sinclair plays Ferris, at first confused, then, as the situation dawns on him, conniving, and, like Monsieur Thenardier, "ready with an open palm", to receive bribes to comply with the ever more ridiculous schemes of the constantly frustrated, would-be philanderers. Sinclair has excellent comic timing, delivering a word or phrase with unerring accuracy to generate big laughs, as well as offering plenty of physical comedy.

Roger and Geoffrey are played superbly by Stephen Bills and Patrick Clements, giving us complete opposites, the suave and sophisticated Roger, and Geoffrey, who tends toward the slob. Their humour initially comes from their individual attempts to keep their potential affairs on track and, later, their collaboration, completely unaware that they are each helping the other to complete a liaison with their own wife.

Sally and Helen are played by Leah Lowe and Rose Harvey, giving two more fine performances. Lowe is hilarious as she starts out with a gin and tonic while waiting for Roger to join her for dinner, then another, and on and on as she heads for oblivion, while Harvey brings forth Helen's naivety and misplaced trust in Roger, swallowing his ludicrous lies while inadvertently ruining his plans.

Eventually, all ends well, although what might happen after the curtain falls and the four begin to examine all that occurred, is anybody's guess. That could easily be another play. If you need some laughter in your life, here it is.