Chris Eldon Lee reviews “Never Try This At Home”, which is at Birmingham Repertory Theatre until Saturday 15th March 2014
This is a co-production between Birmingham Rep and Told By An Idiot. And there’s the clue. It’s idiotic.
This is how the story goes.
On the 8th March 1979 Petra Massey, the token female on the Birmingham-based Saturday morning kids TV programme “Shushi”, simply couldn’t take any more of the sexual harassment and degradation from her unreconstructed male co-presenters. So, live on TV, she smeared her naked body with baked beans and tried to hang herself from the studio wiring. Needless to say, the series was pulled immediately.
25 years later an equally naff clip-and-chat TV show host is “Looking Back” at the story of the doomed programme and trying to reunite the reluctant cast.
You know the evening will be awash with memories when you are handed a plastic poncho at the door, and to be fair, there is a near perfect pastiche of (let’s admit it) ‘TISWAS’ to close the show. But this mockumentary – of a TV show that majored in mockery – is an unkind insult to my chortling Saturday morning memories.
Why does it have to be so cruel?
Despite being devastatingly funny, Victoria Wood’s “Acorn Antiques” had affection for “Crossroads”. The television spoofs of “The Famous Five” somehow still managed to honour Enid Blyton. But “Never Try This At Home” is akin to declaring ‘Noddy’ was an axe murderer.
Having said that, it is funny…in an undergraduate humour sort of way. There are some beautifully observed skits on the clichéd and stereotypical nature of 70s TV. The excruciatingly awful phone calls from kids and the obsessive fans who seemed to populate the studio every week are mercilessly recreated with (in retrospect) complete accuracy. The jokes are clever and unexpected, though they don’t always relate to the plot. That sense of making-it-up-as-we-go-along is expertly executed (unless, of course, they were making it up as they went along) and they’ve been inventive with their content; coming up with spots like “Make Your Own Dog”, “Kick The Vicar” and “Piemageddon”.
If this play flops (and I fear the worst) it’ll largely be because it falls between the expectations two audiences. It has the kind of BBC3 humour that appeals to a generation too young to have any knowledge of the subject matter; whilst we oldies may resent the wanton destruction of the happy recollections of 5 million children.
When the current day TV host Niall Ashdown finally coaxes Petra Massey into his seedy studio to face 25-year-old archive of her very public breakdown, the now very mature woman complains, “I’m just not sure what is the point of that”.
I wrote that line down, to finish my review.
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