In Dad’s Army Radio Show at Queen Theatre Hornchurch on Monday 1 November, just 2 actors, David Benson and Jack Lane transport the audience right back to Walmington, working from original radio scripts – complete with sound effects, vintage music and all of Perry and Croft’s beloved characters and catchphrases. Highly acclaimed by critics and by audiences of all ages. 2 actors, 2 microphones, over 25 characters – and lots of sound effects! Perry and Croft’s classic BBC sitcom is brought gloriously to life in three episodes of the hugely popular television series hilariously and lovingly enacted by two master performers. We spoke to them…
Which of the main characters do you each play?
JACK: I play Mainwaring, Jones, Pike and other incidental characters
DAVID: An assortment of platoon regulars: Wilson, Frazer, Godfrey, Walker. I also get to play some of the less-frequently seen but equally loved stallwarts like The Vicar, The Verger, Hodges and Mrs. Fox.
Do you always play the same characters or do you swap them between you?
JACK: We always play the same characters; this was something we played with in rehearsal. We both said which ones we most favour and it transpired that Mainwaring, Jones and Pike actually have a large share of the dialogue, which is why I generally stick with that trio and David looks after Wilson and the remaining members of the platoon including additional guest spots such as the German U-boat Captain.
DAVID: I think either of us could play any of the characters if we wanted to swap but we like it the way it is. In some of the earliest rehearsals we took turns playing each character – me as Mainwaring, Jack as Walker – but it soon became clear who was going to be who.
Who’s your favourite character to play and why?
JACK: Captain Mainwaring. He’s a tricky voice to get right but Arthur Lowe’s timing is second to none, my main objective is to nail that. I love playing the class distinction stuff with him, something that’s still alive and well in this country. His exasperated reactions to Jones and lofty responses to Wilson are heaven for any actor. I have a great deal of fun with them.
DAVID: I love playing Sergeant Wilson – which means playing John Le Mesurier, of course: utterly charming and elegant in his self-characterisation. I used to impersonate Le Mesurier when I was a Birmingham schoolboy, not for the entertainment of others but for my own secret pleasure. It calmed me down, to pretend I was Sergeant Wilson, who seemed to float airily above even the most fraught situation. He was in fact a very anxious man behind the far-away smile which is maybe why, in adult life, I find his Dad’s Army character still fits me like a glove.
Do any pose you particular problems?
JACK: The only problem is the sheer speed of changes in tone, body language and character but it’s all about breath control and vocal choreography. Once you’ve mastered that you can happily have a conversation with yourself as two or even three characters.
DAVID: Godfrey is a very tricky voice to get right because it is as airy and flaky as Dolly’s puff pastry. When the line before might have been in Frazer’s ferocious brogue or Hodges’ menacing bark, it can be a little difficult to adjust to Godfrey’s frail and faltering delivery.
Growing up were you a fan of the original TV series?
JACK: I was a huge fan! Listening to the cassettes of the radio series at age 8, I would fall asleep to them so those characters and their rhythms are burnt into my memory. I wore out my VHS copies. I knew it line for line so the job was half done when the opportunity of playing them came up!
DAVID: I remember the words ‘Dad’s Army’ being spoken by a school friend when I was seven and I wanted to know what it was as it sounded very interesting. So, I must have been watching it from the age of seven which means I saw it from the second series onwards. It is deeply entrenched in my life and I like most of the nation I adore it and somehow believe that it was all done especially for me.
How do the radio scripts differ – if at all – from the TV show?
DAVID: The brilliant adaptations of the telly scripts by Harold Snoad and Michael Knowles for Radio4 sometimes left out exchanges, one-liners and even whole scenes. On comparing the published Dad’s Army scripts with the broadcast versions – which often differ in phrasing, deleted lines – against the radio transcripts we made (essentially three different versions of each episode) – we spent a lot of time trying all the versions out, and then line-by-line selecting the best of each to come up with our own versions for performance.
JACK: They differ greatly at times, it depending on how visual the TV episode had been. Some dialogue was clearly removed for running time issues, as the narrative on radio has to allow for more descriptive dialogue to be added. We’ve replaced many original lines from TV episodes simply because they were too funny to loose.
A lot of the Dad’s Army comedy came from visual gags, with machinery and weaponry going wrong. How do you get that across in this show?
DAVID: All the highly visual elements of our chosen episodes – whether it is Mainwaring and Jones being swept across the countryside attached to a barrage balloon and pursued by the platoon in Jones’ van, or the appearance of a vintage Steam fire engine, or Jones’ Lewis gun ripping a piece out of the Vicar’ Hall – all this can be done with words, sound effects and the audience’s vivid imagination.
JAC: Sound effects and the audience’s imagination, for which there is no limit. We always say that we bring the voices and the audience brings the set.
Have you met any of the original cast – and of so what do they think of your show?
DAVID: I have over the years been privileged to meet many Dad’s Army cast and creatives, though many have left us in recent years: Clive Dunn, at his house in Portugal, Pamela Cundell, Ian Lavender (we were in an episode of Goodnight Sweetheart together), Philip Madoc on his last recording session, Frank Williams, Bill Pertwee, and Jimmy Perry and David Croft themselves, a true honour.
JACK: We met Harold Snoad and Michael Knowles, who adapted the episodes for radio, Michael also appeared in several episodes. It was a huge privilege for us to have them in the audience at Richmond Theatre and much to our relief they enjoyed it.
Does it have the blessing of the BBC and the original writers?
DAVID: The show has been blessed by the original radio script creators Harold Snoad and Michael Knowles, who came to see the show at Richmond Theatre last year. Harold was a senior creative on Dad’s Army from its outset and Michael was a frequent guest actor – I actually impersonate him in two of the episodes. And we were given a 5-star review by the Radio Times for our stage show, which we will take as ‘the BBC’s blessing’!
You’ve met quite a few surviving relatives of the original cast – what have they said to you?
DAVID: I had a very good friend in Joan Le Mesurier, John’s widow, who saw the show twice and given it her full blessing. We were very pleased to have the family of David Croft at a recent show, including all his children, who gave us their enthusiastic approval for our work!
Dad’s Army has just celebrated its 50th anniversary and is still watched by millions on BBC 2 on Saturday nights – what do you think is its enduring appeal?
JACK: Character-led comedies on TV are almost non-existent now. The characters in Dad’s Army endure. They all feel so real because such superb actors played them. Perry and Croft knew how to write them, how to keep their core personality no matter what situation they’re put in, which is where most of the comedy often derives. That’s not easy to do unless you have the perfect mix of quality writers and actors and quality always endures.
DAVID: The enduring success of Dad’s Army is not only in its exciting situation of Britain facing an existential threat, in its delightful characterisation and conflicts of personality, but because, rarely amongst popular comedy shows of the era, it offends no-one. It has been watched by families together for generations and will always evoke this feeling of comfort and shared family pleasure for those lucky enough to experience it.
What age group does your show appeal to and attract?
DAVID: Dad’s Army seems to be totally universal in its appeal. We have many elderly people coming to see us, who feel included and connected to our work, and to very young people indeed. Our youngest fan is aged eight and is obsessed with the television Dad’s Army and with our show, which she has made her mother bring her to twice. We had one wonderful matinee, at the gorgeous Theatre Royal Bury St. Edmunds, when half the audience was a large party of very elderly people from a local care-home and the rest were 15-year old drama students on an outing. They all seemed to be equally engaged and the theatre rocked with their combined laughter.
What’s your favourite Dad’s Army episode?
DAVID: I like the episodes with real emotional undertow: ‘Branded’, where Godfrey confesses to having been a Conscientious Objecter; ‘A Wilson – Manager’, where Wilson becomes Manager of a rival branch; and of course Mum’s Army, which we are now performing, in which Mainwaring has a ‘Brief Encounter’ moment. ‘The Deadly Attachment’ is the all-time great episode. It’s got everything: a tense situation, great character banter and best of all: Germans!
JACK: Mum’s Army’. For the first time we see Mainwaring’s vulnerability when he falls for a new female recruit, Mrs Grey. Played to perfection by Carman Silvera, it’s beautifully written with a nod to Brief Encounter. I love pathos in comedy and this episode gives the cast to flex their dramatic muscle which is rarely seen in the series.
David, you played Kenneth Williams and Frankie Howerd and Jack you played Norman Wisdom in acclaimed, award/winning one-man shows. What attracts you to these comedy greats?
DAVID: I feel Jack Lane is very much a kindred spirit with me: he is the only other actor I know whose affinity and identification with another performer can allow him to inhabit and magically to recreate that person for an audience’s imagination. I have had this experience with Kenneth Williams and others I have made shows about, and it is that which gives the work Jack I do together its particular unique quality. It is really a mutual admiration society which we invite the audience actively to participate in. Kenneth Williams was a perfect choice for me to make my debut as, back in 1996 in Think No Evil of Us: My Life With Kenneth Williams. I was really the first to focus on him as a character study and he helped me to score a huge hit when I first took my work from Edinburgh to the King’s Head and then round the UK in 1997. There is something about Kenneth’s manic energy that, in portraying him, tapped into a deep well-spring of pent-up frustration of my own and gave a force to my work that another subject might have lacked. Think No Evil of Us totally changed my life and gave me the introduction I craved to the mainstream of the entertainment world: a West End run, the part of Noel Coward in Goodnight Sweetheart, a fan letter from Maggie Smith, Barry Humphries in my audience… all thanks to my strange ability to connect with the much-missed comic actor, sage and martyr Kenneth Williams.
JACK: I grew up loving Norman Wisdom. Aged 13, I wrote to him – and to my astonishment he replied! I think that stuck with me, that he’d made time. As I grew older I learned about his incredible Dickensian back story and his meteoric rise to fame. I was attracted to his eternal optimism I suppose, the fact he went from being a food-snatching urchin to becoming a household name and cherished comedy star can only be compared to Chaplin. What Norman achieved in his life was astonishing. I had a burning desire to make everyone aware of his story and what is possible when you believe in yourself.
Do they have anything in common?
DAVID: Kenneth is an obvious gift for any actor to play since he cannot be over-acted: his character was writ large and in broad strokes, though with a very thoughtful and subtle side
to his character that a rounded portrayal must also include. I was very fortunate that when I was thirteen, Kenneth read a story that I submitted to a Jackanory competition. I seem to have been connected to him all my life and he was the obvious subject for my first solo show. Kenneth and Norman are similar in that they were both working class, self-taught artistes who both had their early experience in troop entertainments, like so many great comedians of their generation (Spike Milligan, Tommy Cooper, Frankie Howerd, Tony Hancock etc). They were not members of the Establishment by birth or social station and made their steady way to the top of their careers by dint of their own hard work and self-determination.