what's wrong with Benny Hill?

The Stratford Theatre Company is now managing this show.

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A bit like John Peel playing The Undertones’ ‘Teenage Kicks’ twice in succession on his radio show in 1978, I would gladly have watched a second consecutive performance of this Mark Carey play on Thursday night. And that really should be ‘nuff said. 

However, name a British comic genius. Cooper, Cleese, Morecambe, Milligan, Sellars? Gervais, Connolly, Atkinson, Coogan, Kay? Victoria Wood? But Benny Hill has now become so synonymous with outdated sexually inappropriate humour and his frequent racially stereotyped characters that it is easiest to gloss over this giant of the comedy world. With 21 million viewers of The Benny Hill Show in 1971, it’s hard not to agree with one member of the audience on Thursday evening who said, “we all laughed at him”.

But should we now look back and realise that this was inappropriate? And shameful? Ben Elton pointedly commented, “We know in Britain women can’t even walk in parks anymore”, when criticising the programme in 1987. Within Carey’s show, which rightly deserves to tour to full houses, we learn all there is to learn about Alfred Hawthorne Hill. From his comic turns in the playground, the huge success of his television show, his frequent travels to France, his relationship with his father ‘The Captain’, his ill health and inability to manage his huge fortune, through to his lonely death at home in 1992 aged 68. Carey provides a genuine performance of a man who only ever wanted to make people laugh. There isn’t a hint of caricature, even when exhibiting Hill’s trademark smirks and eye rolls. This is honest, truthful acting at its best.

But this play is a two hander or rather a ‘one and a dozen-hander’ for Dani Carbery matches Carey by supplying a stream of individuals crucial to the telling of this tale; she plays his father, a French waiter, a seedy paparazzi, a solicitor, an American tourist (Hill had huge fame in America too), a showgirl, a Mary Whitehouse sort, and an alternative comedian who condemns Hill for his brand of so-called humour. She manages to give everyone their own personality through voice, movement and great facial expression.

But hold on, there are original songs aplenty throughout too (although I fancy ‘Ernie’ lost out to save on performance rights, or would it have been just too cliche to include?). The set is simple, a living room, but adaptable for all variety of locations. 

At the end, my wife and I drove home continuing to discuss the merits of working class comedy performed by working class individuals. There is nothing inherently wrong with Benny Hill for wanting to make people laugh, and laugh they did. 

The show runs until Saturday 15th at the delightful Ilmington Village Hall then touring thereafter. Do not miss out!

Tony Homer