Ying Tong
English playwright Roy Smiles has accomplished something remarkable with Ying Tong: A Walk with the Goons. It is at once the story of one of modern comedy's greatest creations, The Goon Show, and a portrait of Spike Milligan, the man who dreamed it up - and it enhances and honours both. If this sounds a less than spectacular achievement, it should be remembered that The Goons was - and is (listen in 5.30am, Friday mornings, ABC Radio National) - the most influential comedy show of the second half of the 20th century; and, by any measure, Spike Milligan was a genius.
Transferring these two difficult aspects to the stage is tricky enough (just think of how risible, usually, is the work of "brilliant" artists when depicted in movies or theatre - because whomever is hired to make the works is inevitably some sad, jobbing dauber.) Yet, in addition to convincingly capturing a sense of brilliance in action and the resulting laugh-a-minute comic lunacy, Smiles has also deftly filled in enough back story and biographical detail to make sense of Milligan's life and times, even for those unfamiliar with either.
After considerable success in London's West End, Smiles is well served in this Australian premiere production, staged by the Sydney Theatre Company. In Sydney for the play's opening, Smiles commented that he was astounded by the exceptional cast - Geoff Kelso as Spike, Jonathan Biggins as Peter Sellers and all his Goon characters, David James as Harry Secombe and Tony Harvey as Wallace Greenslade - frankly never expecting Australian actors to be able to "get" the characters - real and imaginary - so well.
That they do is a tribute not only to their talent, but also to director Richard Cotterell. He has teased and fashioned a fast-moving yet nuanced and touching fantasia of mental disintegration and seditious imagination with the four actors and a full colour soundscape of FX by Paul Charlier.
Set in designer Michael Scott-Mitchell's terrific evocation of the shiver-making tiled and vaulted Victorian grimness of a north London mental asylum, Ying Tong nevertheless confidently and hilariously opens with a Goon Show segment. After demonstrating why generations of fans have adored and admired the show, the play quickly descends into Milligan's exhausted and snapped mind. (A feverish, heartbreaking and fully rounded and grounded human being from Geoff Kelso.) For the remainder of the play, with assistance from real and imaginary visitors - the rest of the Goons and their characters - Milligan desperately tries to continue writing the weekly radio episodes; which he did from 1950 to 1962 and which led, directly, to a major mental breakdown.
Jonathan Biggins is as good as one might hope and expect as the suave non-person Peter Sellers and the panoply of voices/characters created for him by Milligan. Tony Harvey's agonisingly Oxbridge straight man Wallace Greenslade is a gem of sustained performance, while the revelation of the night is David James as the rotund Welsh funny-man Harry Secombe. James does a remarkable job of capturing Secombe's blithe spirit, unquenchable good humour and compassion for his impossible friend Milligan, as well as the tenor's unmistakable singing voice and laugh.
Ying Tong is a lot more than a bunch of clever impersonations, however. As well as delivering laughter and tears, Smiles and his Australian collaborators explore and reveal the inner workings of the Milligan mind in its context as the subversive scourge of the BBC and, by default, the British establishment of the 1950s. No wonder The Chaser's Chas Licciardello was in the opening night audience: he was checking out his comedic ancestry.
Ying Tong: A Walk with the Goons, Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House to May 19 then touring; ph: (02) 9250 7777 or www.sydneyoperahouse.com
