What better antidote for the monotony of grey February days than a truly sprightly farce? The Mill at Sonning is currently offering Ray Cooney’s It Runs in the Family, a play from 1992, which ticks all the right boxes – a sense of the traditions of the Whitehall Theatre, a furious pace, which does not allow you to draw breath long enough to reflect on the improbabilities of what is passing before you, and a cast that clearly relishes all the technical challenges they have to embrace. It is quite a short play, but you are plunged into the thick of events right from the start and emerge feeling you have had a full night out.
Director Ron Aldridge is a veteran of this genre, and fully appreciates the key facts about farce – that there has to be a good dramatic story underlying the play, which could equally be flipped in a serious direction; and, secondly, that the more the scenes are played in deadly earnest the funnier the play becomes. Eventually the high-octane hysteria develops into a kind of intoxicating laughing gas from which there is no escape.
You know you are in a farce immediately you see the set – simply from the numbers of doors, windows and cupboards on display which you know will soon come into their own. We are in a doctors’ common room at a London hospital just ahead of Christmas. The staff panto is in rehearsal and consultant neurologist David Mortimore is putting the final touches to a keynote lecture which should pave the way to a major promotion and even a knighthood.
However, in a classic farce device, this is the lecture that is forever deferred and derailed. Dr Mortimore it turns out has a past in the form of an illegitimate son, who together with his mother, a former nurse at the hospital, have turned up in the company of a policeman who has arrested the son for motoring offences. As Dr Mortimore tries to manage these events and get to his lecture, and you then add to the mix interventions from his colleagues, his wife, the Chairman of the Board, and one of the patients, it is no surprise that before long several of the cast are out on the window ledge with one dangling perilously. From there on to the end the baroque elaboration and fantastical invention mounts as, among other things, doctors impersonate matrons and paternity is arbitrarily reassigned.
All credit to the energy and stamina of the cast in keeping all the plates vertiginously spinning throughout, and with only a few moments of corpsing along the way. This is an ensemble succcess, but all the same there are a few performances you just have to single out. Steven Pinder as Dr Mortimore is essentially the ever-inventive emcee of the procedings; and his main dupe, James Bradshaw, as the innocent Dr Hubert Bonney, never rests either. Elizabeth Elvin is a classic matron channelling the spirit of Hattie Jacques, and Natasha Gray is a feisty Nurse Tate. Iain Stuart Robertson draws on his decades of experience to deliver a fine set of disruptive Scottish interventions, and Francis Redfern does a lot to plausibly update the role of the young teenager, Leslie. Titus Rowe, Rachel Fielding, Oscar Cleaver and Eric Carte are all admirable straight foils for the bulk of the comic business.
No commentary on the Mill at Sonning can omit some reference to the dining element that is part of the package. Now with waiter service and no diminution of quality, the meal is an integral part of the entertainment that marks out the uniquely attractive offer of this exquisite location. When once asked what his theory of the theatre was, Verdi replied, ‘A full one.’ The management of the Mill at Sonning have acted on the same intution with deserved success.
Writer: Ray Cooney
Director: Ron Aldridge
Cast: James Bradshaw, Eric Carte, Oscar Cleaver, Elizabeth Elvin, Rachel Fielding, Natasha Gray, Steven Pinder, Francis Redfern, Iain Suart Robertson, Titus Rowe
Until 12 April 2025
2 hrs with interval