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IIn 1988, I worked on a contest page in a classifieds magazine. One week the prize was tickets to a new movie called Withnail and me. There were also soundtrack albums and posters designed by Ralph Stedman. The records did not flood. Watching Bruce Robinson’s film, I thought to myself that there was nothing to excite me. Of course, I had no idea that there would ever be a stage adaptation labeled West End Transfer.
But then I didn’t consider the power of the VHS tape. At some point after its general release, Withnail and I became a staple of drunken college nights. With its highly quotable lines and air of weary sloppiness – a sort of 60s answer to The young – it became a cult hit, making Richard E. Grant a star and propelling him Paul McGann en route to Doctor Who.
This means parts of the audience in the Birmingham Rep treat Sean Foley’s sleek and energetic production as a tribute concert, less theater than a collection of beloved one-liners and iconic images. Robert Sheehan as Withnail earns shrieks of approval just for saying, “We want the best wines available to mankind.” Robinson’s script, which he adapted himself, has a nice aphorism to it, but it’s not exactly Oscar Wilde.
It’s the same when Sheehan walks in wearing that voluminous great coat, and when he and Adonis Siddique as Marwood – the “I” of the title – hit the road in a real Jaguar Mk2. The show is not to blame, but it seems to exist to allow fans of the film to experience a shared moment.
Still, if copycat adaptations are your thing, Withnail and me is as good a candidate as any. Telling the story of two aspiring actors and their accidental holiday in Penrith, the film has a small number of characters, each crisply drawn, and an equally small number of scenes, all of which are carried by the power of the acting. This provides a smooth transition to the scene. Much of Robinson’s script is word-for-word the same, and if nothing else, Marwood’s filmic voices sit more comfortably as a direct address to the audience.
Foley kicks it up a notch with rough-and-tumble live performances by Jimi Hendrix, Kinks and Procol Harum numbers, and a sprinkling of visual gags, like a bunch of carrots dangling swiftly in front of the groin of predatory Uncle Monty (Malcolm Sinclair). Sheehan makes a loose-limbed Withnail, lost in a fog of drunken entitlement, while Siddique is hilariously timid as Marwood, the high school boy who’s out of his depth.
The behind-the-scenes team does a tremendous job facilitating the magical transformations on the set of Alice Power, which gets added depth from Akhila Krishnan’s large-scale video. It adds up to a bright, crowd-pleasing show that plays for fans of the original without tinkering with the formula that made it such a sleeper hit.
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