BWW Reviews: ERIC AND LITTLE ERN, Vaudeville Theatre, November 20 2013

There's an almost eerie uncanniness about this show - JonTy Stephens and Ian Ashpitel don't so much play Morecambe and Wise, as become them, shiny 70s suits and all. Theatre always involves the suspension of disbelief, but, with these performances, there's barely any disbelief to suspend!

The first half is set in a hospital room. With Ernie Wise on the last of his short, fat, hairy legs. Eric Morecambe, like the Ghost of Chistmas Shows Past, turns up and the old repartee starts all over again. There's a few of the famous old one liners, a classic sketch or two (for old times sake) and even a bit of the famous bed banter. Space too in this set-up for the two men to reflect on their careers and their friendship, which stretched from teenage years on the end of the pier, through their "overnight sucess" twenty years on, to Eric's third and final heart attack at just 58 years of age. The second half sees the pair in more familiar surroundings, on stage in front of the curtain, with plenty of the old "Are we on?" stuff, sight gags and even a song and dance. The years just roll away.

That the two actors are close lookalikes of their subjects helps to convince, but it's in the mannerisms, the asides and the looks into each other's eyes that the spirit of Eric and Ernie is captured. Stephens and Ashpitel know they that must be comics, know that they must be impersonators and know that they must be song and dance men - but they never forget that they must be actors first and foremost. That skill in acting drives the show.

Just when the manic personality of Eric Morecambe and the willing, but pompous, victim schtick of Ernie Wise begins to grate, it's time for the fat lady to sing. But Janet Webb is long gone too and has no ghost to revive her big finish in this show. So the boys go skipping off, one hand on the hip, the other behind the head and the audience troop off into a less simple, more aggressive world. Escape from that reality is what Eric and Ernie offered to a British public who lapped it up in the 1960s and 1970s. Come the 2010s, that same public lapped up this show - proving that old comics never die, no matter how many times they play the Glasgow Empire.

Eric and Little Ern continues at the Vaudeville Theatre until 12 January.

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