The Sword and the Dope,

Greenwich Playhouse - January 17 – February 5, 2012

Take a dollop of Monty Python, add a sprinkling of Benny Hill and pour the odd-looking mixture onto a pantomime base. Leave it to stew for an hour and a half until the wits of the audience become dulled. Thus the ingredients of the musical comedy, The Sword and The Dove, currently playing at the Greenwich Playhouse for a mind- numbing 14 more days. What on earth did the two chefs, writer Michael Horspool and director Matthew Gould, have in mind?

The opening number, Long, Long Ago, which went on, on, and on, set the tone for the rest of the night. It lacked humour and wit and was laboured and long and became painful to watch by the end. Had it not been for the actors who soldiered manfully on we would have walked out with the rest at half time. But against all logic and sense we simply stayed where we were, firmly hoping (against hope) it would improve. We were wrong.

Based on the legend of King Arthur and his Knights, but with references to mobile phones, the story lacked structure, was disjointed and weak and consisted of a series of short scenes. We might not have noticed had the writing been funny, but the writer - described in the programme as “stumbling into script writing” – was continuously wide of the mark. Ostensibly for adults, the humour was puerile – “I've something in the oven - I hope it's not a bun” – perhaps the funniest joke of the night. Even the narrators, Bosstock (Patrick Rowe) and Rumpkin (Sam George), a sort of mediaeval Ant and Dec, were laboured and painful and ended up by simply making matters worse. But if the humour was bad, the music was worse - from the tuneless, The Black Knight, He’s all Right, to the rock anthem, No Matter What, with lyrics that would have embarrassed a child.

That the cast carried on was a credit to them all, the second half even worse than the first. Energetic and diligent, they were usually on cue despite a continual and embarrassing lack of laughter. Alas, no-one stood out although Will Seaward (Perceval) caught the eye, his curious accents and over-acting, amusing and Jay Perry, a former S Club Junior - "currently working on a series of personal projects" - could at least sing in tune. Why Gould didn’t tell Horspool to simply rewrite the script is a question that is frankly beyond me.

As bad as it gets. 1/10, for the actors.

DM
January 2012