Review by Steve Bennett

What a lot of effort and energy was expended in this show. The capering, farcical opening set the tempo to frantic, with the two main characters Tony (Jonathan Donahoe) and Harry (Daniel Benoliel) tearing to and fro. They grabbed the attention after a metaphorical curtain-raiser with Hank Marvin (Chad Mason) synching his guitar-playing to a recording, while running a slide show of news photos of Cliff Richard fans, smiling inanely and alternately shaking his head in disbelief or nodding and winking at the audience.

The premise is one slavish fan of Cliff (Harry) and his dopey mate (Tony) are off to a Cliff Richard convention in Switzerland, to spend time at the Cliff Hotel, hanging out with like-minded nerds. They win a limo ride with Cliff, but that’s where it all goes wrong…

As an Edinburgh hour (ie around 55 mins) this overextends what might be a rattling good end-of-term skit from the Year 12 drama group, if it were kept to four or five minutes or a recurring set of lightning-fast sketches.

The energy and commitment of the actors, who also wrote the piece is not in question. They’ve created a pantomime bus costume, for the multiple Summer Holiday references, they successfully conjure up an airport, being in flight, the baggage carousel and being stuck in a car, but there’s far to much clumping on and off stage, hiding behind the board of Cliff Richard memorabilia and one way-too-long period of sitting in the dark for one cheap gag.  

There are a couple of good lines and ideas, including Cliff’s voice synthesiser, but there’s also repetition, which doesn’t reinforce the gags, and the characterisation of the two Normans – the ultra-nerdy Cliff Convention organizers – is pure Terry Jones shrieking Old Woman.  

You’ve just got to wonder what’s it all for?  The ‘ain’t Cliff Richard funny’ shtick was well and truly exhausted 20-odd years ago with The Young Ones and this is reminiscent of that sitcom with the intensely earnest and irritating Harry calling to mind Rik Mayall and floppy-haired, dippy Tony, Nigel Planer.

You really shouldn’t try to imitate what is already an exaggeration, they even go for an on-stage Grand Guignol episode, which the original sitcom’s decapitations and explosions did with such gusto. Given these actors were presumably between nought and five years old when the shows were broadcast, they’ve obviously had to do some research.  

To top it all, at least a couple of audience members didn’t know the significance of the Summer Holiday bus, the Cliff Richard movies and who Hank Marvin is or what is his association with Cliff, so their hour must have had an extra layer of unintentional surrealism.  

A bit of pruning, the loss of Hank (nothing personal at all, he emerged with least loss of dignity, but was pretty much pointless), might knock this into better shape, but as it stands the show starts off funny, but rapidly outlives its welcome.

Reviewed by: Julia Chamberlain

Review date: 1 Jan 2008
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett