Whangārei Fringe 2022: Kerikeri Theatre Company's Blackadder - The Golden Age

Blackadder (Tom Evans) and the cast of Kerikeri Theatre Company's production of Blackadder: The Golden Age. Photo / Peter de Graaf

Stuart Devine reviews Kerikeri Theatre Company's stage adaptation of Blackadder: Through the Golden Age. Devine has worked as an actor in theatre, radio, television and film, throughout New Zealand and the UK, for more than four decades.

The thriller was staple fare for West End, Broadway, repertory and amateur companies throughout the English-speaking world for nearly 50 years.

It is generally accepted to have been bookended as a genre by Patrick Hamilton's Rope in 1929, and Anthony Shaffer's Murderer in 1975. From about this date, production companies and, more importantly, audiences, lost interest in the form.

The genre withered to virtual invisibility, going the same way as blank verse, city comedies and Victorian melodramas.

New genres emerged: the solo show, agitpop, and physical theatre being merely three among many.

One genre that gained a foothold in the 1990s and has a dedicated, if ageing, audience is the TV to stage adaptation. Examples include Fawlty Towers, 'Allo 'Allo, Are You Being Served, Yes Minister and of course Blackadder.

The common feature of the genre is that the stage presentations all derive from English television comedies and have a relatively broad, almost-pantomime playing style, often replete with double entendre. Or in the case of Blackadder, single entendre.

The trick of making this genre work for an audience is the actors must abandon any ideas of creating something original.

Unlike Richard III or Hamlet, the audience is not interested in startling new interpretations of Basil Fawlty or Mr Humphries, thank you very much. We want our beloved characters represented as faithfully as possible without the mediation of a screen.

In this, the Kerikeri Theatre Company succeeds admirably. In the case of Peter Heath's Baldrick, spookily so.

The whole very large company of 16, to a player, clearly grasps the stylistic demands of the piece, and while the six core cast hold the story together with a good understanding of pitch and pace, the seemingly endless array of zanies presented by the rest of the company explores the outer reaches of sanity, to the delight of the well-deserved full house.

Director Harley Alexander should be well pleased with his work because this kind of company cohesion does not emerge by itself.

No discussion of the presentation would be complete without fulsome acknowledgment of Jenny Blackler, credited as the wardrobe designer and seamstress, and her team. The design and execution of the costumes, down to the smallest detail and the most minor of characters was breathtaking.

The audience had a great time. This review was commissioned and first published on theatreview.org.nz