The Lavender Hill Mob proves just a little lame on the Chichester stage

It’s well intentioned and certainly good natured, and it certainly keeps close to the plot of the celebrated 1951 Ealing Comedy it’s based on. But for a show which is pitched purely at the level of entertainment, the stage version of The Lavender Hill Mob is probably neither quite funny enough, nor quite fun enough. For a tale which is all about stolen gold bullion, the sparkle isn’t there. Instead there’s a theatricality which wears increasingly thin and which makes it all seem just a touch laboured.

It’s a curious set-up. After masterminding the strangest heist, Henry Holland (Miles Jupp) is in Rio on New Year’s Eve with a bunch of ex-pats who urge him to use them to re-enact his extraordinary tale when a stranger (clearly a policeman) turns up.

It’s a device which certainly does away with any need to be remotely realistic but when we get two women playing cor-blimey crims, it starts to get a little grating. Squeaky doors are voiced; human seagulls take off. It’s all a little clever-clever.

There’s not a lot of fizz in the first half, and though the second half certainly perks up, the array of French stereotypes which is paraded before us verges on the tedious – which is a huge shame. Offering the whole thing as an on-stage re-enactment in the end creates far more problems than it actually solves. Which isn’t to deny the skill of the performers – even if far too many words are lost in the range of accents which are adopted. At times it all needs to be just a little more carefully enunciated.

Miles Jupp’s performance deserves a better adaptation. He creates Henry Holland, the bowler-hatted non-entity who dares to dream of something more than his humdrum existence in post-war England. When fellow lodger (Justin Edwards) turns up and inspires the means, Holland finds the way. The result is a great tale, an audacious caper but one not particularly well served by the choices the creative team have made here. Jupp (SEE INTERVIEW HERE) and Edwards do everything they can, but in the end, it’s all just a little bit lame.