It’s the target that makes the satire as well as the satirist. Is the subject powerful, active, relevant and menacing? Patrick Barlow’s new spoof, Ben Hur, must answer ‘No’ on all four counts. The show takes aim at two principal irritants: vain actors and the Hollywood epics of the 1950s, whose titanic scale was offered as bait to audiences besotted with their cosy new TV sets. Old Hollywood is a spent ogre these days and the foibles of the acting trade are hardly a threat to civilised life, so the show can’t embrace our immediate concerns.
But the execution is compellingly assured. The cast is led by John Hopkins, an excellent straight actor with a fine instinct for comedy, who glides on stage as Ben Hur and dares us not to admire his strutting physique and orotund diction. The plot unfolds with a wealth of comic effects. The dialogue is written in a pastiche of Shakespearean blank verse, which might become tiresome but the satirical genre itself is toyed with and mocked. There are sight gags galore. Alix Dunmore, doubling as Esther and Tirzah, rushes off stage for costume changes that can’t be completed in time. When a centurion arrests Ben Hur, the rubber chains won’t fit over his sandals so he obligingly removes them to facilitate his enslavement. For the galley scenes, he’s shackled to an oar alongside two dolls, both clearly dead, which jerk back and forth with the ship’s oscillations. The only disappointment is the chariot race where the yoked teams of horses look very convincing without being silly or exaggerated.
Ben Hur
Audience participation is encouraged. The cast hand out cards printed with jokes to be read out by volunteers. John Hopkins, now a director, cues the lines and a scene unfolds with play-goers reciting gags that are ironically unfunny.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in