‘Punishingly painful ragamuffin of a play’ – The Crown Jewels assessment

As The Pub Landlord, stand-up comedian Al Murray is a really humorous man. As Charles II in Simon Nye’s pastiche Restoration farce, not a lot.

In Carolinian finery and a curly wig protecting his follicle-free zone, Murray delivers his strains in garbled posh, referring to the Royal regalia as “The Crine Jools” and stepping out and in of character in a present that’s half historical past play, half arise revue.

Nye’s script is predicated on the unlikely however traditionally correct account of the try by Irish seditionist Colonel Thomas Blood (Aidan McArdle) to steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London.

He and his accomplices, Captain Perrot (Neil Morrissey) and Tom Blood Jr (Joe Thomas) had been caught and destined for the gallows earlier than Charles had a change of coronary heart. 

Instead of being hanged for treason, Blood was pardoned and awarded a pension by the King whose mercy was motivated extra by political expediency than altruism.

A handful of bawdy songs from Carrie Hope Fletcher’s Lady of the Bedchamber punctuate the motion and Murray doubles because the ageing Talbot Edwards, Keeper of the King’s Jewels, who’s stabbed throughout the theft however survives to hobble again into the arms of his not-so-loving spouse (Mel Giedroyc).

To name this farrago a cross between a Carry On movie and a panto can be insulting to each and I used to be minded to recall Lysander’s line in the direction of the tip of A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard”.

Murray and Giedroyc work the viewers nicely however it’s not almost sufficient to avoid wasting this punishingly painful ragamuffin of a play.

The Crown Jewels, Garrick Theatre till September 16. Tickets: 0330 333 4811