Elizabeth & Raleigh : Late but Live
Tour: Bristol Tobacco Factory
Wednesday 10th September 2008

Crackerjack rating: 7 / 10. Hmm... a woman played by a bloke? Sounds a mite Elizabethan and – hey, look! It is. Our eponymous heroes in Late but Live: Elizabeth and Raleigh are ably portrayed by funny men Simon Munnery (Queen Elizabeth I) and Miles Jupp (Sir Walter Raleigh) in this gag-fuelled romp at the Tobacco Factory Theatre

. And, yes, this show works splendidly if verbal slapstick is your thing.

The usual suspects – outsize codpieces and ruffs, gags of indeterminate gender – all do a decent job of setting the scene for Raleigh’s increasingly desperate seduction attempts on Her Majesty.

He is assisted by a coterie of fabulous bon mots: “My aim is the aim of an owl: to wit; to woo.”

Munnery, too, does a more than decent job of conveying the imperial quirks of royalty. He is by turns a querulous, handsomely flirtatious monarch – doubtless all things yer-actual historical Elizabeth was.
Don’t expect emotional volcanoes, Shakespeare it ain’t. Yet writer Stewart Lee does achieve a deft balance between surreal gags – throne with flashing lights, anyone? – and moments of tenderness between the players, ably assisted by Jane Watkins’ lilting music

And Jupp’s Raleigh, is a dapper, nippy adversary to his harsh-tongued Queen in what is more or less a slick war of stand-uppery designed to expose the anarchic workings of the human heart.

The avalanche of one-liners offer a refreshing cure for any working-day blues and give vital oomph to this tale of potatoes and executions.

Sophie Lomax