Jack Absolute Flies Again. National Theatre.

The National Theatre’s delightful, laugh-out-loud tribute to the Battle of Britain generation deserves to be one of the hits of the summer.

14 July 2022 Press Night

The Rivals is one of the most gloriously funny works in the English language. It has all Sheridan’s hallmarks: witty dialogue, soft satire, recognisable stock characters, mistaken identities, double-dealing, and discoveries, all wrapped up in a timelessly engaging narrative.

Setting aside for a moment the honourable objective of Jack Absolute Flies Again, which is to pay tribute to the Battle of Britain’s pilots and ground-crews, it is worth focussing on Richard Bean and Oliver Chris’ sheer chutzpah. Reimaging a near-perfect comedy takes some serious nerve.

Do they pull it off?

Yes, in spades. While the National Theatre’s production may not, as Caroline Quentin’s impressively magniloquent Mrs Malaprop would have it, “go down in the anals of history,” it is a constantly and delightfully funny show that feels absolutely apt for the crisis-riven, strikebound summer of 2022.

The writers shift the plays setting from 18^th century Bath to an airfield in 1940s Kent and sensibly eschew the temptation to mess with some of the canon’s most recognisable comedy characters. It sometimes seems as if Sheridan’s original creations have teleported through time and landed, fully formed, ready to be unleashed on the undefended home counties.

Bean and Chris also keep most of the original narrative structure intact. In deference to the sacrifices of the few during Britain’s darkest hour the ending has changed (or more precisely an epilogue has been added), but otherwise this is Sheridan’s Captain Jack wooing an entirely recognisable Lydia Languish.

Captain Jack (a charismatic Laurie Davidson) is a fighter pilot billeted at Malaprop hall, hosted by that “parsonage of great lexicographical dexterity and faultless electrocution,” the Lady of the Manor.

Alongside his squadron colleagues, the lovesick boy-man Roy Falkland, poetry writing Bikram ‘Tony’ Khattri, and outback buffoon Bob ‘Wingnut’ Acres, Jack takes his life in hand every day, scrambling to meet the incoming hordes of German fighters.

Into this set-up arrives Absolute’s pre-war squeeze Lydia Languish, now a liberated and determinedly feminist aircraft delivery pilot. Her dramatic appearance saves Jack from a nasty encounter with a Messerschmidt, and, ardour reawakened, he sets about getting his erstwhile lover back. Lydia though wants none of it, her many attractions now being focussed on hunky northern mechanic Dudley Scunthorpe, whose own affections incline towards maid Lucy.

Jack’s father and owner of most of Devon, Anthony (a magnificently splenetic turn by an implausibly bushy eye-browed Peter Forbes), has his own plans for his son’s future marriage, as does Mrs Malaprop for her niece, the aforesaid Lydia Languish.

Cue a rollicking journey filled with mis-delivered messages, Machiavellian maids and mistaken identities. Packed with fantastic comic writing, tremendous performances, and consistently creative visual humour, Jack Absolute Flies Again is of that rare breed of comedy in which one laughs from beginning to end.

Caroline Quentin deserves every iota of the praise she is going to get for her Mrs Malaprop, even if she is blessed by having the very the best lines to work with.  She enthuses a description of meeting husband Horace “at a champagne reception for visiting indignities,” when still a “a wide-eyed slip of a thing, filled to the quim with relish” with such innocent pathos that one yearns for more.

Jack’s forlorn attempt to explain the female reproductive system to a mystified Faulkland by reference to complicated engineering of a local road junction (the one between the A259 and the Yapton Road if you must know) also stands out.

Designer Mark Thompson uses the motifs of railway posters and Billy Bunter illustrations to encapsulate a cartoon version of 40s Britain into a superbly executed series of sets. Emily Burns direction is pacey without feeling intrusive, and she rightly seems content with letting the writing do its magic.

Can one criticise? The second half loses a little pace early on and could happily lose 20 minutes. The sound is a bit iffy on occasion. There is not much satire to speak of, aside from the obligatory dig at Boris Johnson’s incapacity for honesty. But really, that is all there is to complain about.

Very highly recommended.

Bob ‘Wingnut’ Acres James Corrigan

Peter Kingsmith Theo Cowan

Jack Absolute Laurie Davidson

Dudley Scunthorpe Kelvin Fletcher

Sir Anthony Absolute Peter Forbes

Flight Sergeant Sampson Shailan Gohil

Lucy Kerry Howard

Roy Faulkland Jordan Metcalfe

Julia Melville Helena Wilson

Mrs Malaprop Caroline Quentin

Bikram ‘Tony’ Khattri Akshay Sharan

Lydia Languish Natalie Simpson

Brian Coventry Tim Steed

Ensemble Millie Hikasa

Ensemble George Kemp

Ensemble Joanne McGuinness

Ensemble Geoffrey Towers

Ensemble Shona White

Director Emily Burns

Duration: 3 hours. One interval.

Full Disclosure: I paid full box-office price for the ticket.