I'll be honest with you. For various reasons I was in a pretty awful mood when I went to see King's Home Front farce at the Richmond Theatre. Seeing a gaggle of fairly talented actors run repeatedly across the stage in a rather outdated play improved my mood; but without making a dent on my mind.
      King's play is the classic madcap farce, comprising not one but four vicars, two ex-actors (although everyone's in costume), and that Shakespearean staple a dog. A vicar's errant wife and her relationships with the men in her life form the main driving force of the plot. Penelope Toop, a smoothly-played caricature from Hattie Morahan, is hard-pressed in the village of Merton-cum-Middlewick to leave her fellow residents unshocked by her modish behaviour, especially when an old friend arrives in town. Throw into the mix Mrs Toop's uncle, the Bishop of Lax; Clive, a co-star from her acting days; and an escaped German POW, and it's no wonder that the actress turned saintly vicar's wife finds herself 'all too human'.
      With farce as a mainstay of wartime theatre, part of See How They Run's early immediate success was due to it being as comforting as its ubiquitous hot water and brandy bottles. The audience know that, as Clive points out early in Act 1, that there will be misunderstandings, but that all comes clean in the final act.
      Yet why make a return in 2006? Douglas Hodge seemed to be unclear on this question. Interpolating the odd reminder of modernity into his otherwise temporally accurate production forced anachronism; having an actress sing snatches of 'California, here I come', and opening to an announcement to turn off one's mobile phone by a British soldier sporting WWII uniform, accent, and terminology. It's funny, but so out of place in this play and this production.
      Hodge's cast responds absolutely to every nuance of the script, every ridiculous encounter: they seem to be having the time of their lives, in particular Natalie Grady as Ida, who entrancingly swoops across the stage. The action is, on the whole, slick, and generally well-performed  only one actor's Russo-Germanic accent when just a German one would do throws one off the scent.
      Transience is the name of the game throughout this energetic production: joke follows joke; entry follows exit; twist follows turn follows twist. What may have been enough for earlier audiences wasn't enough to sustain my attention, and with nothing but more of the same, I found myself switching off towards the end. As a production this is instantly enjoyable, but on leaving, instantly forgettable.
Lauren Cushman