The Times - 15th August 2007
Johnson and Boswell - Late But Live
*****
Robert Dawson Scott at the Traverse

A clever idea, to bring the great lexicographer and his toadying sidekick back to the 21st century to revisit their famous journey to the Hebrides, in the Traverse’s late-night comedy slot. Late, you see, as in dead. But alive again.

Iain Gillie, the promoter whose idea it was, made his best move in recruiting Stewart Lee to write the script. The challenge of trying to write some Johnsonian aphorisms for the modern era must have been irresistible.

Lee appeared himself to introduce the show on the first night, promising not to do so again “unless this turns out to be the best bit”. Well, the rest of it wasn’t as bad as all that, but Lee is such a charmer when he wants to be that he might have to be careful.

He has tried to give what follows a little dramatic shape, but don’t expect much more than a gently entertaining way to wind down the festival day. Casting Miles Jupp as Boswell was, however, another good move. Jupp is about the only comedian I can think of who relishes being posh, and he is also a Scot. Boswell being such a pompous popinjay it suits him to a T.

Simon Munnery as Johnson is less comfortable, caught in two minds between acting the part and playing the comedy.

Still, much as Samuel Johnson was scathing about the Scotland in which he first arrived, Munnery and Lee fairly lay into contemporary Scotland, from the cuisine to the Parliament building. Just because a worm crawls across the page of a book it does not make it a reader, any more than having a parliament building guarantees the highest standard of debate and intellectual inquiry. Oddly enough that got a huge laugh from an auditorium mostly full of Scots; can’t think why.

But, despite a couple of more elaborate set-pieces, including a very silly (in a good way) storm sequence on the way to Skye, which makes fun of the relationship between the two men rather than anything to do with Scotland, it does not really get much farther. There are some good lines and there are tantalising glimpses of another, more thoughtful but no less entertaining, show. For example, it is James Boswell, the Scot, who is quickest to disparage his native heath, something the Scots still do well.

Munnery’s mouth-organ duet with the on-stage piper looked like the beginning of something quite surreal. The final denouement involving a haggis is unworthy of all concerned.

Until Aug 26. Box office 0131-228 1404

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