The Times - 7th August 2007
Dr Johnson revival shows that
old jokes really are best
Ben Hoyle, Arts Reporter

With his rapier wit, caustic put-downs and prodigious appetite for drink, Samuel Johnson is right at home on the Edinburgh Fringe but for one thing: his jokes are 230 years old.

In 18th-century London, Dr Johnson was a superstar — the author of the first English dictionary, a critic and a novelist who dominated the capital’s literary salons. In 21st-century Edinburgh, he is half of the Fringe’s most eagerly awaited double act in Johnson and Boswell — Late but Live, which has its premiere at the Traverse theatre tonight.

The show, devised by the team that turned Jerry Springer: The Opera into one of the most explosive successes in Fringe history, is an attempt to prove that Dr Johnson can cut it as a modern comic. The Jerry Springer cocktail of biblical characters, filthy arias and tap dancing Ku Klux Klansmen appalled some and delighted many more. Five years later Stewart Lee, who co-wrote and directed it, has returned to the festival with Iain Gillie and Nigel Godfrey, the show’s managers, to put on the equally ambitious Johnson and Boswell.

“Great wit is timeless,” Lee said yesterday. “I wanted to find a way to take the dust off Dr Johnson’s lines and show that Johnson was as funny as any stand-up working today.”

Like many Fringe favourites, Dr Johnson’s humour was punchy, rude and often fuelled by alcohol. The Scots were frequently the victims of his barbs, although he did concede that “much may be made of a Scotchman, if he be caught young”. In 1773 Dr Johnson toured the Hebrides with his dissolute friend and biographer James Boswell, who recorded much of their conversation verbatim. Extracts from their contrasting accounts of the trip form the basis of Lee’s script.

The show is set in the present day. Boswell has persuaded Dr Johnson to visit Edinburgh to cash in on the fad for celebrity memoirs by relaunching their travel books.

“We quote a lot of their text directly but we’ve also written things about Scotland today in a Johnsonian way. I don’t think the average person will be able to tell which bits are Johnson and which bits are us. That’s the joy of it,” said Lee.