Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Simon Callow.

Satire it seems may be a dying art, no wonder when various governments and politicians have done their damndest to try and, for want of a better word, outlaw it, make it unacceptable, to make it seem offensive where there is no offence to be gleaned. They have succeeded by stealth, by somehow deflecting the real reason for satire, to poke the finger of jolly discontent at the objectionable behaviour of those who are paid handsomely to serve the state and insisting by doing so it is an attack on other sections of society.

Of course in the hands of Simon Callow, a grand master of the acting profession, a man whose command of the English language is as welcome to modern day society as a national lottery win, satire should be seen as being in safe hands for all at the mercy of a politician’s or official bodies whim.

Juvenalia, a piece first visited on stage a few decades ago by Mr. Callow, has lost none of its biting ridicule, it’s cruel caricature wit in which the brutal is masked only slightly by the sardonic smile at the hand of the deliverer. Some might believe that satire has no place in society, without satire the unchecked get away with murder, without satire poking its way into the tight knit world of officialdom, a world which teeters on the verge of being governed by the detestable, would surely become a place in which no sane person could thrive.

Whilst the subject matter of Juvenalia has quite rightly moved away from being the de rigour of comedic slant, what Simon Callow does with a certain degree of aplomb and evident style is turn that satire against its self. It reinforces the need for the genre but it also shows that satire itself is not above being ridiculed. The seemingly cruel and sinister beaten by the verbal dexterity of a stage legend.

To understand satire, even just enough to see the joke for what it is, a piece of writing which should be congratulated rather than dismissed by those wishing to oppress, Mr Callow offers a light to the audience in which permission is re-granted to not feel ashamed to pick an argument with an uncaring, unresponsive and at times unrecognisable set of officials to scared to be open to ridicule if it means they stop having the semblance of power they are used to.

A terrific display of acting prowess by Mr. Callow to deliver for 75 minutes a piece of theatre that should never be forgotten.

Ian D. Hall