Review by Jason Stone

It can't have been easy to strike the right balance when writing this show. While it must have seemed likely that the audience would largely consist of fans of Ed Reardon's Week, the Radio 4 comedy programme for whom the misanthropic character was created, the script also needed to cater for those who were new to the fiftysomething writer and his world of woe.

The show opens with Reardon's voice heard off-stage, apparently struggling to make it to the venue on time. It allows for a few jokes at the expense of the Fringe and proves a neat way of underlining the character's radio origins. An audience who had previously only had a mental picture of this much-loved character then had to adjust to glimpsing Reardon's visage. The laughter was a little thin as they adapted to the strangeness of this.

It wasn't all original material. Devotees who heard 2010's radio special An Audience With Ed Reardon – which was recorded in Edinburgh – will be familiar with much of this show's content because co-writer and performer Christopher Douglas uses a lot of the same conceits. Both shows rely on the repetition of the pretentious phrase ‘perpetuating the sickening contagion of obedience’ in excerpts from Reardon's early writings and, as in the earlier show, he becomes irritated with the performances of the actors hired to help him exhibit his questionable genius.

Another difficulty derives from the broader brush-strokes required for a live performance. Part of the beauty of Ed Reardon's Week is the care with which it has been crafted. Without being wholly believable, it is constructed with enough of a concentration on authenticity to strike a realistic tone – but Douglas's live performance suggests a lack of faith in this understated approach when in front of an audience. This was probably an astute judgement but it robs the show of more than just authenticity as it makes Reardon appear much more of a buffoon than he does on the radio.

For all his curmudgeonliness, Reardon wins the radio audience's sympathy to a much greater extent than Christopher Douglas might have supposed when constructing the character. Perhaps the intention was to create a grotesque but a high level of self-recognition ensures that the audience shares the central character's frustration with the modern world. The same couldn't be said of the stage version of Ed Reardon as his roguish charm is transformed into a more bitter form of misanthropy.

The strongest sequences were the reconstructions of Reardon's early life as they offered a new element to the back story glimpsed through his autobiographical musings on the radio, and provided an opportunity to take full advantage of the live environment. Douglas's two co-stars came into their own during various reconstructions in which they played roles such as Reardon's parents and the over-amorous wife of his boarding school housemaster.

One narrated line from these sequences offers a telling insight into the dysfunction that shaped the man, as he reveals that his parents were so desperate for him to get on at the boarding school to which he was sent at the age of eight that ‘they wouldn't let me come home at weekends’.

Douglas's creation is held in such high regard by fans that the audience was practically willing him to succeed or, rather, to fail as that's Reardon's modus operandi. Every note of familiarity prompted an approving murmur from a crowd who clearly wanted little more than a rendition of a cherished character's greatest hits.

In this sense, Douglas unquestionably delivers what his audience wants, and the show appeared to prompt a great deal of contentment among the fans. Perhaps they should have gone the whole hog and printed bingo cards containing the programme's catchphrases so fans could strike them off as they were recited.

It was that kind of show... its benignity was simultaneously its greatest strength and its greatest weakness.

Review date: 22 Aug 2011
Reviewed by: Jason Stone