Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Rob Castell, Nick Cavaliere, Tamzin Griffin, Sinead Matthews, Joseph Timms, David Webber, Tim Lewis, Simon Dormandy.
Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts…well not quite absolutely, especially when Time and the clockman are on your side.
However fleeting Time is, when naked ambition and naivety meet corporate greed and rank stupidity, Time is not adverse to having a laugh at the expense of the system so proudly held up as the shining beacon in which to chase a profit is seen as good. To knock someone the moment they have delivered that fortune seen as even better and in which some boardrooms up and down the country of late have saw fit to rival. It only takes one man though to make a mockery of it and The Hudsucker Proxy is born.
Adapted, given so much edge and love from the Coen Brothers celebrated film, The Hudsucker Proxy is a production made for the Playhouse stage. The three ringed circus effect of keeping the eyes busy and theatrically engaged never lets up throughout the whole two hours, like a cardiograph machine that somehow has the ability to check out the brain waves and act as a teas maid at the same time, this production serves up the perfect play at the right temperature for the audience perhaps already jaded by the way the country has taken a turn for the satirical worse since the General Election.
When a company owner decides that even when the money is pouring into the company like never before, the only way out of the mess ahead is to defenestrate himself, a chain of events is set in motion in which lowly but decent hearted Norville Barnes is elevated up the corporation ladder so quickly, the scorch marks are still visible. Then the stock-market wolves and the carnivorous press are set loose, hungry and chomping at the bit, ready to take down another sucker who dares announce themselves off as having a good idea.
In a play that has some of the best stage lighting seen in a quite a while, a fast turn-around in which the cast surely change from character to character and their clothes quicker than Superman finding out he has half a dozen dates in Metropolis on the same evening and a script which allows for the audience’s minds to keep more active and enthralled than a hamster being told it can use the Liverpool Eye as a place to work out, The Hudsucker Proxy is a play of genuine outstanding achievement.
Witty, superbly cast and charming, a play that captures all that is good about the theatre and isn’t ashamed to revel in its first-rate appeal, excellent and spot on with its referencing to modern life, The Hudsucker Proxy has no substitute.
Ian D. Hall