A BUNCH OF AMATEURS

I have seldom found a film more punishingly unfunny than A Bunch Of Amateurs, in which Burt Reynolds played a washedup Hollywood star tricked into playing King Lear at Stratford, only to discover, when he arrives in the UK, that it’s not the glorious Royal Shakespeare Company in the Bard’s birthplace, but an am-dram company in the sleepy Suffolk backwater of Stratford St John. The show’s director, Dorothy – who is also the company’s driver/ dogsbody/Cordelia/Fool – had hoped that the name Jefferson Steel would attract an audience and the necessary dosh to secure the company’s threatened future.

Bewilderingly our dear Queen enjoyed it so much at the Royal Film Performance in 2008, she made it the next Christmas show for her Sandringham staff. I just hope she was generous with the mulled wine.

So it was with a heavy heart that I dragged myself to the idyllic Watermill Theatre in the depths of Berkshire. Mercifully Private Eye editor Ian Hislop and his co-writer Nick Newman have dramatically rewritten the piece for the stage. And it works a treat, because a theatre as tiny as the barn where the Stratford St John players are mounting their Lear is precisely where this farce belongs. Light as a feather it may be but it is, above all, about acting, stardust, the indestructible genius of Shakespeare and the redemptive, transforming power of theatre.

Admittedly it helps hugely that Mitchell Mullen’s Jefferson is more likable and a far better actor than Reynolds. He’s a slobbish spoilt oaf who can’t be bothered to learn his lines and evidently lost his manners long ago in La La Land. When a local farm worker, who also plays Gloucester, describes his tricky, if dullish, journey to the rehearsal, Steel rudely shuts him up with an impatient, ‘You’re mistaking me for somebody who gives a s**t’.

More important, like Lear himself, Steel awakens to his idiocy and also to his humanity. ‘I am a foolish fond old man,’ he says, displaying a surprising flair for playing Shakespeare.

Freshly stuffed with Shakespeare (Shakespeare’s tragedy is brilliantly boiled down to a movie-trailer-length whipthrough) and embellished with lovely sung snippets of the Fool’s wit and wisdom set to music, it’s a richer, more rewarding piece. But it is the conviction of Caroline Leslie’s talented cast, who take their preposterous characters with absolute seriousness, that gives this farce its dramatic force.

Bagnor is not that far from Windsor. I suggest Her Majesty nips over for a right royal laugh, infinitely superior to the film. 

Until 28 June at The Watermill Theatre, Bagnor, Newbury: 01635-46044, www.watermill.org.uk