Headed for the canon: Withnail and I, at the Birmingham Rep, reviewed

After nearly 40 years, Withnail has arrived on stage. Sean Foley directs Bruce Robinson’s adaptation, which starts with a live rock-band thumping out a few 1960s hits. The musicians take cameo roles as maids and coppers. The show needs a larger cast especially for the tea-room scene – ‘We want the finest wines available to humanity’ – which calls for a big crowd of crumbling old crocks. Never mind. The production would have thrilled diehard fans. As for newcomers, they would probably have been better to start with the film.

Robert Sheehan delivers a glitzy, karaoke version of Withnail which is all surface and very little inner torment. And that fits well with Adonis Siddique’s melancholy, pent-up Marwood who binds together the emotional twine on which the piece hangs. The balance between them is richer than in the film, where Paul McGann’s Marwood seems like an empty outline.