Lucky Stiff – Drayton Arms Theatre

The cast of Lucky Stiff at the Drayton Arms Theatre, London

Lucky Stiff continues at the Drayton Arms Theatre, London until 14 May.

Star rating: two stars ★ ★ ✩ ✩ ✩

The less said about this musical farce, this desperately unfunny debut effort by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty long before they hit the big-time with Ragtime and Seussical, the better.

A game, energetic cast of ten does its best with the clunky material, which played Off-Broadway in 1988 and was briefly seen in the West End in 1997, but it’s a hopeless task.

For some reason it was turned into a movie a couple of years ago (why?) and flopped. Bad movies of bad theatre… it doesn’t get much worse than that.

The extraordinary silly story, based on Michael Butterworth’s novel The Man Who Broke The Bank At Monte Carlo, concerns hapless East Grinstead shoe salesman Harry Witherspoon who is informed that an American uncle he’s never met has left him $6 million.

Ah, but there’s a catch – he has to travel with the fully-preserved corpse (in a wheelchair and dressed to look as if alive) to Monte Carlo on the bucket list vacation uncle never got round to.

Otherwise the dough goes to the Universal Dog Home of Brooklyn, whose representative Annabel Glick stalks Harry ready to pounce should he fail to honour the precise instructions.

Also in hot pursuit of the fortune are his uncle’s nearsighted lover Rita who shot him in a fit of jealous rage, her brother Vincent, an Italian playboy and a showgirl, but it is hard to care.

The convoluted plot is ridiculous beyond endurance. This is two hours without a single belly-laugh and only the occasional smile, notably with a one-way transatlantic phone monologue with Vincent (Andrew Truluck) getting it in the neck for forgetting his partner’s 40th birthday.

There’s a sweet ballad ‘Nice’ near the end from lovebirds Harry (Matthew Whitby) and Annabel (Michelle Crook), both likeable performances, but the ensemble numbers are too strident for such a small space and the sets don’t impress.

Paul Tate as dead Uncle Tony has the best of the deal. He doesn’t have to say or sing anything (although he does come to life in Harry’s multi-coloured nightmare after a champagne-fuelled getting-to-know-you night with Annabel).

To be fair, there were some titters to be heard around me in the tiny four-row theatre above the Drayton Arms pub in the Old Brompton Road. But the applause at the end seemed more in sympathy than rapture.

Others in the cast are Elizabeth Chadwick (also the co-producer with Marc Kelly), Nicholas Chiappetta, Ross McNeill, James Douglas-Brennan, Rachel Lea-Gray and Barbara Jaeson. All of them try too hard.

It wouldn’t be so bad if there was one or two memorable songs but that would be asking too much. The music is decently performed by a band of three, Kieran Stallard (keys), Pete Hunt (bass) and Rob Ellison (drums).

Jeremy Chapman

www.thedraytonarmstheatre.co.uk