Theatre review: The Man in the White Suit

Sean Foley’s comic instincts have never been infallible (remember Ducktastic? I certainly don’t, it closed with unseemly haste before I could see it) but I do seem to be disappointed with his work more often lately. Jeeves & Wooster in Perfect Nonsense was one of his bigger hits a few years ago, but teaming up again with its star Stephen Mangan hasn’t really recaptured that magic as they bring Roger MacDougall, John Dighton and Alexander Mackendrick’s Ealing comedy The Man in the White Suit to the stage. Mangan plays Sidney Stratton, a lab technician at a Lancashire textile mill in the 1950s, who keeps blowing things up in his attempts to create a revolutionary new kind of material. When he gets fired from Corland’s (Ben Deery) factory he wangles his way into rival mill owner Burnley’s (Richard Cordery) lab, where he finally comes up with a fabric that never deteriorates, loses its shape or even gets dirty.

Sidney sees this as his gift to the common man, who won’t need to keep buying new clothes, but doesn’t see how it will also make thousands of textile workers unemployed, and soon Brenda (Rina Fatania) is leading them all out on strike, while even his landlady (Sue Johnston) is worried about the money she’ll lose from no longer being able to take in laundry.

But his biggest problems inevitably come from the bosses, with Corland and Burnley alternately worrying about how their industry will suffer from the invention, and trying to claim the rights for it themselves. With Sidney sticking to his principles they turn to Burnley’s daughter Daphne (Kara Tointon) to attempt to seduce him, but she has her own agenda. She also has her own accent that is presumably aiming for Celia Johnson but lands on Margaret Thatcher dancing around in her underwear. Unless she’s actually aiming for Margaret Thatcher dancing around in her underwear, in which case STOP ENABLING TORIES AND THEIR WEIRD BONERS, JESUS CHRIST.

Foley throws everything including the kitchen sink at the stage in an attempt to get laughs, and unfortunately the fact is constantly, painfully obvious: There’s fart noises coming from test tubes, Mangan’s trousers are constantly falling off or otherwise disappearing, and the least said about the attempts to throw in topical references the better. In fact, Sidney’s desire to minimise waste should have been the easiest thing in the world to tie into the present day, what with Extinction Rebellion going on right down the road from Wyndham’s, but it’s thrown into the script so heavy-handedly it feels like an afterthought. The whole thing feels incredibly laboured, and the timing feels off throughout – never more so than in a topical reference to the prorogation of Parliament, which must rank as one of the worst-timed gags I’ve seen in many years.

There’s musical interludes from a skiffle band, with Matthew Durkan performing songs composed by Charlie Fink, which feels like an overt attempt to recreate One Man, Two Guvnors. Which was ten years ago, let it go. The only thing that emerges unscathed is Michael Taylor’s design, the set whose flats twist, revolve and unfold like a pop-up book come to life being the one thing to display effortless charm. In fact very few people actually come out of this badly - most of the cast members are talented enough and putting enough effort in to keep the whole thing feeling affable; you root for them to get given a gag that really lands, but it’s in vain. It’s not quite a disaster, but The Man in the White Suit is a long way from comedy success.

The Man in the White Suit by Sean Foley, based on the play The Flower Within the Bud by Roger MacDougall and the screenplay by Roger MacDougall, John Dighton and Alexander Mackendrick, is booking until the 11th of January at Wyndham’s Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Nobby Clark.