A razor-sharp, laugh-filled, baffling play about nothing.
An empty restaurant with sawdust on the floor. A single table with two chairs and some empty glasses. A backdrop of the sky. A woman appears and speaks as if she is conducting a séance. That’s all Dinner With Groucho needs to begin our journey into an evening of sincerity, absurdity and rumination on existence. Sound odd? It is, and it’s brilliant.
T. S. Eliot and Groucho Marx were unlikely pen pals, corresponding for three years until they met in June of 1964. The reports say that Groucho reread King Lear so he could hold his own in conversation; Eliot was more interested in talking about Duck Soup. This meeting is the inspiration for Frank McGuinness’s newest play which revels in the imagined repartee of these two giants of their field.
When we meet them, they are unmistakable. Joan Bergin has T.S. Eliot dressed every inch the prestigious publisher and Groucho looks like, well, Groucho. And the actors, seasoned as they are, embody what we expect from them immediately.
They are helped by the writing, which is wonderful to listen to: quick, sharp and with plentiful nods to the lives and times of those who speak them. It’s verbal jousting and it keeps the play ticking along, allowing the slower moments to breathe without causing any dreaded lulls. Loveday Ingram’s direction certainly helps, moving the actors around the space—to play to three sides—with ease and fluidity.
The actors are seasoned and it shows. Ian Bartholomew as Marx and Greg Hicks as Eliot are incredibly competent performers. They handle the jumps in subject and tone with skill and give necessary gravity when the play requests it, such as when Groucho uses Israeli champagne as a way to start needling Eliot about his antisemitism. It’s a smart move on McGuinness’s part to write in a third character of the Proprietor, as the energy Ingrid Craigie brings with her regular arrivals is a needed addition.
Their chemistry is joyous; it is clear that this cast, and this show itself, is having fun. The interludes alone, complete with music hall numbers and some enthusiastic Charleston, show this to be the case.
Sure, there are moments the sudden shifts to depth and sincerity don’t entirely land, and there are references that went over my head as a younger audience member. But that’s not the fault of this production, which is a gloriously fun evening at the Arcola Theatre in Dalston. Eliot once wrote he could connect “nothing with nothing.” This play seemingly does the same and manages to create something. Something fun. It’s been a while since a piece of theatre had me properly laughing. Go see it.