Photograph by Steve Tanner. Dean Nolan, Mike Shepherd as Steptoe and Son.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Mike Shepherd, Dean Nolan, Kirsty Woodward.
Albert and Harold Steptoe, national comedy legends that were bought to B.B.C. television by the incredible writing of Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, two men bound to each other through blood, despair, apathy and a small measure of distant attachment. No one could have predicted how much the two men would change the television viewing habits of the nation as they settled down each week to watch the Steptoe and Son.
Kneehigh Theatre and Emma Rice have adapted the classic television series into a condensed and sympathetic piece which draws on four of the finest episodes of a series that ran for 12 years and gives the audience a more uncomfortable but highly enjoyable feel for the frustration, anguish and despondency that raged in both men as they feeling of suffocation become more overbearing as the years passed by.
The iconic figures of Harold and Albert Steptoe, the father and son rag and bone men, were reborn and re-imagined in the shape of Mike Shepherd and Dean Nolan. Both actors gave sterling performances which did them great justice. Especially with so many preconceived ideas about how both men would normally sound and look being so firmly ingrained on the minds of anyone who had seen the original programmes.
The four episodes the team had chosen to re-imagine were The Offer, The Bird, The Holiday and Two’s Company. These four episodes highlight the growing dependency between the two men, from near all out civil war between the two men in The Offer, the father and son team were surrounded by the junk of their profession to the scrap and decay of the lives, to the final moments of Two’s Company which saw the love of both men’s lives, portrayed by the excellent Kirsty Woodward, glean just how much the two men really meant to each other.
The pathos, the Beckett like appeal of the episodic stories was touching, dream-like and full of unresolved anger. It was impossible to take your eyes of the unfolding drama on stage, a real case of blink and you could miss a significant moment and that for something as highly charged and beautifully poetic as Steptoe and Son would have been a crime.
A loving look back at one of the great television programmes of its time bought very much into the minds of a 21st century audience. Marvellous.
Ian D. Hall