Review by Steve Bennett

Alone in a school staff room, a teacher frets so much about what he’ll say in his impeding farewell speech that he conjures up the ghost of Kenneth Williams to lend him a creative hand.

That’s the premise of Andy Thomas’s cleverly-titled show, a rather forced hybrid of two separate interests: the life of a front-line educator and the life of a dead, supercilious and camp Carry On star. The resulting chimera is a linked series of sketches that would certainly go down a storm at a teachers’ conference, where every well-observed reference would carry a strong resonance. It’s inevitably less effective for a general audience, because of its narrow focus, but nevertheless still enjoyable.

All the key moments in Williams’s illustrious CV are appropriated for parody sketches related to the classroom. The funniest is Willo The Wisp, redubbed as if to be telling the story of a geography field trip. Thomas, a Brighton-based teacher in real life it seems, is invited to talk about his career without hesitation, deviation or repetition – and there’s a Jackanory moment as an old encounter is re-lived. Colin Elmer is an expert Williams impersonator, capturing every haughty ‘ooh’ and exaggerated grimace perfectly, and his quickfire cross-talk with Thomas fizzes nicely.

Not everything zings, though... a lyric-swap Katy Perry song parody creaks along, and there are parodies of soap and war films that seem like padding, especially given their lack of relevance to Williams, who’s still stealing scenes 25 years after his death.

Back in reality, Thomas amusingly retells an anecdote about a confrontation with a school bully and his parents, and even if the the individual sketches seem piecemeal, a satisfying, if obviously manipulative, finale ties the hour up nicely as he delivers his valedictory address in doublet and hose.

It seems there are a lot of teachers in the room, recognising such phrases as ‘I like you... it’s your behaviour I don’t like’ which they must have parroted to a hundred unruly pupils. No wonder it’s found an audience at the Brighton Fringe for three years running.

But Thomas’s crisis of confidence, pondering whether he can really make a difference, is more universal – as is the idea he can uses his last day to tell all his colleagues exactly where to go. As he says, ‘The worst thing about being a teacher isn’t the students. It’s the other teachers.’

In his final report, Thomas gets an A for effort, B for execution and C for writing.

Review date: 20 May 2013
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Hove The Brunswick