Review: The Grand Gesture, Harrogate Theatre

The company had a hunch that the woman hitherto most famous for playing Angie in Corrie might have something in her writing.

Her first play for Broadsides, The Bells, revealed they might be right. Her second, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, was a wild, out of control, brilliant piece of work and last year’s A Government Inspector – which also premiered at Harrogate as a co-production, was a solid piece of work.

In this latest piece McAndrew combines the exuberance of Accidental Death with the strong efficiency of A Government Inspector to come up with another hit. The confidence in both McAndrew’s writing and the resulting confidence the cast has in the script means it is a production that is easy to watch and you sense will grow even more and obtain a sense of anarchy as it beds in.

Simeon Duff is going to kill himself – which you might not think is all that funny but when Duff is played by Michael Hugo – essentially a Northern version of Lee Evans – it becomes hilarious. His performance sits at the heart of this play and it is little wonder McAndrew and director Conrad Nelson trust him to carry the stage. From the very second he shuffles on stage and quietly asks the audience, in a distinctive Scouse twang, to “tern der mobiles and dat off”, he has us in the palm of his hand. If Duff is going to kill himself, the townsfolk figure, it might as well be for a cause – and from there on, it’s a comedy about convincing him to take the bullet for them. It’s made pretty clear, pretty quickly that this will be a heightened, surreal piece of work when Simeon’s bedroom is filled with instrument-playing strangers. There is an abundance of comedy, but once again what elevates McAndrew’s scripts are the moments, as there was at 
the denouement of A Government Inspector, where the rest of the production melts away and we’re left with a man on stage speaking from the heart. McAndrew has drawn heavily on Hamlet’s most famous speech as a through-line in this work, but there is nothing wrong at all with that – to be or not to be is the only question and McAndrew explores it brilliantly.

To Sept 21, then touring.