Betty Blue Eyes review: A charming slice of English eccentricity

Based on the Alan Bennett-scripted film A Private Function, Betty Blue Eyes should come with a trigger warning for veggies and vegans. It features songs about killing a poor defenceless pig and numerous shout-outs for the underrated joys of spam. And, set in 1947, it’s all about a plot to slaughter a sow to provide a meaty feast in honour of the Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip.

All of this might make the show seem as unappetising as a slice of ham that’s long past it’s sell-by date. But it’s the most whimsical of musical comedies – a jolly romp that really brings home the bacon. Pardon that groan-worthy pun but Ron Cowne and Daniel Lipman’s script, which draws heavily on plot points and one-liners from Bennett’s original, is thick with them.

It’s also an oddly charming, almost surreal slice of English eccentricity served at the Union Theatre on a much smaller plate than when it played the Novello Theatre in 2011.

The stars of that production were Reece Shearsmith and Sarah Lancashire. They played small-town chiropodist Gilbert Chilvers and his wife Joyce Chilvers, stepping into the sizeable shoes of the film’s Michael Palin and Maggie Smith.

Reece and Sarah were great, as are Amelia Artherton and Sam Kipling in this revival that is scaled down only in terms of simpler sets and a more cramped performance space. Director Sasha Regan fills that space with 19 actors and one puppeteered pig in a 100-seat auditorium where you’re so close to the action you can practically smell the spam frying.

You can definitely see the sweat and spit of a cast that’s having as much of a ball as the audience. Kasper Cornish choreographs it so they never collide during the Les Miserables-style ‘Steal the Pig’ or a dazzling flashback to a wartime dance. Best of all is ‘Nobody’, where Artherton’s Joyce rails against class division as the dancers use sausage links as canes.

Artherton is sometimes drowned out by the band but she’s an enjoyably caustic Joyce. Desperate to move up in society, she’s a comically cold fish whose idea of marital harmony is to promise “Sexual intercourse will be in order” so long as Gilbert does as she says.

Kipling’s Gilbert is a loveable doofus. He’s like Seymour from Little Shop of Horrors only with a Northern accent and a fascination with bunions and fetid fungal growth.

His finely-sung ‘The Kind of Man I Am’ is a very moving big ballad in a superb score by George Styles and Anthony Drewe. The melodies are instantly hummable and the rhymes (“agog” rhymed with “hog”, “glean” with “latrine”) are ones that witty wordsmith Bennett would be proud of.

The second act is especially side-splitting as Joyce hits on a plan to blackmail the higher-ups. And I won’t spoil the ending but it’s an unexpectedly happy one in a show that’s as crackpot crazy as it is joy-affirming.

4/5

Betty Blue Eyes is at the Union Theatre in London, until 22 April. Get tickets here.