'Dad's Army' flagship show for Best of British

The Bruce Mason Centre rocked with laughter as the indomitable spirit of the Warmington-on-Sea Home Guard was resurrected by a cast of Australian lookalikes led by Jon English.

The stage version of Dad's Army was penned by the writers of the 1970s television phenomenon and it remains faithful to the essence of the original work.

The production eschews the slick production values that have become the hallmark of contemporary musicals in favour of an endearing amateurism perfectly in accord with the ethic of the Home Guard.

The show is an ideal flagship for the North Shore's inaugural Best of British Festival. It draws heavily from the music hall tradition which gave rise to many of the conventions that have defined British comedy from The Goon Show onwards - an acute sensitivity, the nuances of class distinction, elaborate use of wordplay when referring to the most basic of bodily functions and a refined sense of the absurd.

The regard for tradition is underlined by a spoof on Morris dancing. In his inimitable parade ground manner, Captain Mainwaring explicates how Morris dancing captures the quintessential English character - the clean white cricket trousers standing for the virtues of sobriety while the anklebells allow for a modicum of frivolity. The stout white sticks provide a link to the earthiness of fertility rites and give Corporal Jones ample opportunities for use of double entendre.

Jon English plays the somewhat marginal character of Sergeant Wilson, whose nonchalant charm is the perfect foil for Mainwaring's earnest self-importance.

With his upper-class pedigree, Sergeant Wilson effortlessly projects a sense that he would rather be somewhere else. At times this sentiment might not have been far from English's mind - when he found himself supporting a pantomime horse or appearing beneath a fruit salad head-dress with his beer gut protruding through a flamenco dress.

If English failed to show much enthusiasm for such buffoonery, he revealed his star quality in a spell-binding delivery of A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square. In a mesmerising performance, he connected with the audience on an emotional level.

Without resorting to sentimentality, the show asks the audience to remember that beneath the comic ineptitude of the Home Guard lay the grim reality of a time when Britain was faced with imminent invasion. For all its silliness, Dad's Army captures a rare historical moment when a shared sense of national character was able to influence the course of human history.

Review

* What: Dad's Army
* Where: Bruce Mason Centre