BBC Radio 4, 27 May 2013
The playwright Roy Smiles has
written two biodramas, each chronicling the lives of some of Britain's best-loved comics. In 2010 he profiled the Pythons;
last year he explored the relationship between Arthur Lowe and John le Mesurier. In Goodnight from Him he turned
his attention to the Two Ronnies, who were first brought together on The Frost Report and debuted on BBC television
as a double-act in 1971. Their show ran for sixteen years, until Ronnie Barker (Robert Daws) decided to retire and run
an antique business.
The play was structured rather like one of the Two Ronnies shows, with occasional comic monologues
and/or sketches interspersed with reconstructed dialogue. Narrated by Ronnie Corbett (Aidan McArdle), it told the story
of how both actors served long apprenticeships in theatre, cabaret and television before they were brought together. Barker
worked in repertory and in the West End before being given his big break on the popular radio series The Navy Lark;
Corbett spent many years working in cabaret with Danny La Rue.
Some of the sketches were quite well written, in a clever pastiche of the Two Ronnies'
style. Barker gave one of his comic monologues in which the pronunciation of words was deliberately wrong, investing
innocent words with suggestive meanings; Corbett recounted one of his tall stories, interspersing his jokes with occasional
guffaws of laughter.
Inevitably, however, the play's success depended on the extent to which the cast could stimulate
memories of the characters they portrayed. Daws' Ronnie Barker was especially good; he managed to show just how shy
the comedian actually was, despite the success he enjoyed. McArdle's Corbett had rather too dirty a laugh; he sounded
more like Sid James rather than Corbett himself. But Mcardle managed to catch Corbett's vocal mannerisms, with
the occasional Scottish vowel punctuating his immaculate RP accent. Matt Addis made an effective stab at John Cleese
- a rather supercilious man, proud of his public school and Oxbridge education (in contrast to the grammar-school educated
Ronnies).
All in all, a pleasurable afternoon's listening,
that conjured up memories of Saturday nights long past.
