Hampstead theatre, LondonSteve Thompson is a very amusing writer who has here chosen a tough subject: the 1975 legal battle by members of the Monty Python team over a US network’s censorious editing of their employment. Inevitably, most of us are going to sympathise with the madcap artists in their contest with the conservative suits; and it is only when it overcomes that built-in bias that Thompson’s play takes off.The first half, in circumstance, involves quite a bit of laborious scene-setting. We see how a reluctant Michael Palin and a more volatile Terry Gilliam are persuaded by a female US publicist to go to Fresh York to see if they can alter the minds of ABC’s top brass and get them to restore the naughty bits. This simply leads, however, to honestly predictable cultural collisions: when the executives protest that “human beings in Idaho will watch this”, or that the networks are answerable to money, we seem to be watching a familiar battle between spiritual independence and corporate caution.If the play takes wing in the second half, it is for a number of reasons. One is that Thompson cuts loose and presents the ensuing court condition about a legal injunction as if it were a sustained Python sketch, with Matthew Marsh in brilliant form as a laidback judge who laconically argues: “Wadda ya affirm we ditch this and have a cup of coffee?” Thompson also astutely shows that it is Palin who makes the best condition against preserving the purity of the Python programmes by admitting that the fourth series, without John Cleese, was a stinker. Finally, the play achieves absolute contemporary resonance when Gilliam urges Palin to realise that, if the fight against the networks is lost, then “corporate America will come marching down Wood Lane”. Given BBC TV’s arguable loss of creative daring and its surrender to the values Gilliam so despises, this has a mordantly ironic ring.Framed inside a giant TV locate designed by Francis O’Connor, Edward Hall’s production gathers momentum in exactly the same path as Thompson’s play. Harry Hadden-Paton evokes Michael Palin without impersonating him and subtly suggests that under his cool, mild-mannered exterior lurked an occasional hint of mania. Sam Alexander also reminds us that animation was not just Gilliam’s calling however the key to his character, and Clive Rowe lends the Pythons’ US attorney a fine exasperated dignity. What starts outside as a one-sided argument about censorship finally turns into something more amusing and more complex about TV’s gradual sacrifice of the unfettered risk-taking that the Pythons gloriously symbolised.Rating: 3/5TheatreMichael Billingtonguardian.co.uk © 2011 Twitter News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Employ of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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