Kenneth Branagh tends to come across as a warm but fundamentally very serious actor, at his best when negotiating some mighty Shakespearean scene. Yet here, in Francis Veber’s dizzy French farce from the Sixties, he’s almost unrecognisable.
At first his character, professional hitman Ralph, appears smooth and purposeful. But it’s not long before he’s reduced to a quivering, jabbering, drug-addled mess, and Branagh’s performance is a riotous feat of clowning, complete with bizarre accents and violent pratfalls.
Alongside him Rob Brydon is Dudley, a press photographer who’s feeling suicidal because his wife is leaving him for her psychiatrist. Dudley is tediously talkative, lurching from one blunder to the next, and when he rediscovers his lust for life he cavorts around in just his underpants, wiggling his pectorals like an expectant bodybuilder.
Brydon relishes both his hangdog desperation and his irritating chirpiness. The pair’s unlikely relationship stems from their occupying adjacent hotel rooms. Ralph has been hired to bump off a witness in a gangland trial — and holes up in a room that affords a perfect view of the courthouse.
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But next door Dudley’s midlife crisis is in full swing, and Ralph finds himself having to act as a kind of therapist, while trying to ensure his giant sniper rifle remains unnoticed.
Their personalities gradually switch over, and visits from the police, Dudley’s wife and her blustering shrink create carnage. Think slamming doors, mistaken identities and trousers that keep falling down. There are golden moments, especially when Ralph has to convince the camp hotel porter (Mark Hadfield) that there’s nothing strange in his having three arms.
The play, despite director Sean Foley’s updating, shows its age — not least in implying there’s something inherently amusing about two men in bed together. The pervasive daftness and innuendo won’t convert sceptics allergic to farce. But the physical comedy is enjoyably frenetic, and there’s a potent chemistry between the leads.
Until April 30 at the Garrick Theatre, WC2H 0HH (0330 333 4811)
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