On Her Todd
Oh Mary! (Trafalgar Theatre)
Is it Trump endlessly wittering on about fake news that has led to recent hand-wringing over the exact truth if drama adapted from reality? Unless you are in (to quote 'Hamilton') the room where it happened, some creative license is surely inevitable. Yet the question seems to occupy us unduly from quibbling over how much The Crown altered timelines for a better narrative flow to the real-life stalker on whom the Baby Reindeer character was based suing Netflix for its wording in billing it as a 'true story'. I don't recall all this fuss in the seventies when Mel Brooks made a similar claim at the end of his Silent Movie .
So it's refreshing that Cole Escola, writer and (current) star of this masterful farce about Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of Abraham Lincoln, assures us it's about as true as...well...a typical claim by Trump.
I have made my antipathy to farce clear in previous reviews, but when it's done well, as in Black Comedy or here, it's like watching a beautiful Heath Robinson-esque contraption in full flow (that's Rube Goldberg-esque for the Americans among you), the Mouse Trap game in theatrical form.
From their ludicrous bustle (designed, apparently, purely to show off their red spotted knickers) to their applause-worthy changes of facial expression, Escola's performance as the president's wife is hypnotic. Others have acted the role, Catherine Tate among them, but to see the writer of this Olivier Award winner do it was a privilege indeed...and when they finally get their wish to appear in cabaret, audience members were being stretchered away with laughter-inspired injuries. It would be impossible to say whether this is funnier or camper than Here Comes J. Edgar - let's call it a memorable photo-funish.
To say anything more about the plot would spoil it for you, but it's better than Spielberg's stodgy, ponderous 'Lincoln' (admittedly the bar is set pretty low there) and I was tickled that I guessed the ending almost from the start. Chekhov's gun? Gotcha.
Cole Escola is set to play the important character of Bon Clay in the third season of Netflix's wonderful live action adaptation of Eiichiro Oda's One Piece. He is a character whose devil fruit power is to turn into anyone he likes. It is inspired casting. I'd be surprised if they needed to audition anyone else.