Review by Steve Bennett

Not even the Marx Brothers could parody Casablanca successfully, so the Tron Theatre Company have set themselves a tough task with this theatrical homage.

Their solution is largely to treat the wartime classic with the respect it deserves, sticking to the plot, albeit in condensed form, and laying their comic business on top. Thus the hour still packs the emotional punch of the movie, with all of the most exquisite quotable lines intact, just with a few added laughs.

Most of these come from the budgetry restraints. The entire cast is recreated by just three people: Gavin Mitchell, Clare Waugh and Jimmy Chisholm – the latter of whom has the toughest time of the ridiculously quick costume changes, since the others are largely busy being the leads, he has to mop up everyone else. Everyone except pianist Sam, that is, who is replaced by an inanimate ornament. Racist.

The performances are superb; Mitchell makes a particularly accurate Humphrey Bogart, while Chisholm’s Peter Lorre is a delight, albeit a brief one. And they have great fun zipping around between the roles in this classic tale of love, allegiance and compromise. If you need to be reminded of the full plot, this probably isn’t for you.

The conceit is that this is a play within a play. The action starts backstage as the cast fret about their delivery, the casting director in the audience, and how they will get around the on-stage smoking ban in the key scenes. Once the action shifts on to the neat set, some of these themes become running jokes, and occasionally the action is frozen to fill in some movie trivia about the making of the film. Elsewhere the comedy comes from zany mugging, or the odd bit of audience participation, such as drowning out the German national anthem with a spirited blast of La Marseillaise.

Morag Fullarton’s adaptation has kept true to the original by adding these comic flourishes, without letting them dominate proceedings. As such, it does fall between two stalls – too silly to be an effective tribute; too respectful to be the Knockabout farce it sometimes wants to be. Yet it somehow still works, especially for those who have fondness for the original – which should, by rights, be everybody.

Review date: 13 Aug 2011
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett