Showing between Saturday 4th until Saturday 18th July 2009 @ Bristol Old Vic, Bristol

Spike Milligan’s popular World War Two memoirs have finally been adapted from the page to the stage in this, the world premier of Adolf Hitler: My Part In His Downfall. Terence Alan ‘Spike’ Milligan, the much celebrated author, actor, composer, painter and comedian served in the Royal Artillery in North Africa and Italy during WW2 and his writings, music and jokes from the time helped him and those around him escape the lunacy that surrounded them. The jokes in the show swing from cheap laughs, one-liners and clichéd camp German accents straight out of Allo’ Allo’ to piercingly perceptive observational humour, but they all help to create Milligan’s own take on the war.

The adaptation on stage here doesn’t follow much of a script or plot, preferring to be vaguely staged around the premise of Milligan and his gunner buddies putting on a concert party for the audience; exactly the sort of show he actually did regularly put on to entertain soldiers during the war. It’s all singing and dancing and starts with endless strings of hit-and-miss one-liners but the jokes worked best in context, like when the troopers were chatting at length in their bunks. It’s all a bit fractured and doesn’t flow perfectly but you’re really helped into the show’s style by Sholto Morgan, wonderfully cast as Spike Milligan, with his perfect blend of cheeky charisma, gormless eyes and innocent mannerisms. There were a few groans along with the laughs but occasionally a joke hit with enough reverence to spawn several aftershocks of laugher throughout the Bristol Old Vic.

The show is not without its sensitive, serious points either and while they manage to avoid being overplayed and clichéd, they seem to jar a little with the rest of the play and could perhaps have been knitted into the script a bit better.

www.spikeswar.com

www.bristololdvic.org.uk

Matt Whittle