Theatre Review - One Man, Two Guvnors - Sydney Theatre Company 2013 Season

Owain Arthur and Edward Bennett on stage

As part of the Sydney Theatre Company's 2013 season, the National Theatre of Great Britain staged  'One Man, Two Guvnors' with the original British cast from London's West End. The play written by Richard Bean is partly based on the 18th Century Italian comedy The Servant of Two Masters by Carlo Gondoli. The play's story is cented on a knockabout servant and dogsbody character Francis who, always looking for an opportunity finds himself with two masters, one of whom is really a woman pretending to be her murdered brother, with the other master being her lover, who happens to be the murderer.  The Goldoni plot has been readapted to be 1960s Brighton in England and features a mix of British humour and slapstick recognisable from the antics in Fawlty Towers, Monty Python and Benny Hill.  Owain Arthur's command of the stage and ad libbing as the character of Francis provides the almost seamless continuity whilst Rosie Wyatt and Edward Bennett as the two Guvnors provide contrasts as well as foils for their servant. The performance in two parts is punctuated with musical mood accompaniment and a well selected period repertoire by the young band, The Craze.