Latin! reviews

Reviews for Latin!

Amanda Hodges
London Theatre Guide, April 3rd
King's Head Theatre, in Islington (Fringe)

Running in tandem with David Benson's meditation on the life of Kenneth Williams is this madcap comedy, penned by Stephen Fry whilst still at Cambridge. It remains his only play to date. Fry has since gone onto to bigger and brighter things but Latin's amusing enough, a witty pastiche of the sort of traditional boys school immortalised in fiction. Described as 'a play in two unnatural acts' it's an uneven spoof that works well in parts- the final scene being a case in point- but seems flimsy and over-predictable in others.

Dominic Clarke is a new master at Chartham preparatory school. His aspirations include becoming headmaster and nocturnal extra-curricular activities with one of his pupils, predilections discovered by ageing senior master Herbert Brookshaw who exacts an unusual penalty. The audience is conscripted into the action, forming the class to whom Clarke teaches Latin on John Daniels' excellent set.

Mark Farrelly plays Clarke, David Benson is Brookshaw, the latter eventually finding that the lure of 'sun, sand and sensual pleasure' is too strong to resist. Farrelly plays for broad laughs and often hams it up too emphatically but Benson's Brookshaw is a delight, capturing the crusty pedagogue to perfection. He's a character who appears the epitome of the old-fashioned master yet secretly relishes some subversive proclivities including a passionate penchant for peanut-butter!

Amanda Hodges Web site

Kieron Quirke
The Observer, Sunday December 1, 2002

Stephen Fry wrote Latin! Or Tobacco and Boys during his salad days at Cambridge. It won a Fringe First and led to his collaboration with Hugh Laurie.

Thanks to its publication in his collected works, it has since become a lot more known than it is performed, which bodes well for Activated Image's production, now playing at the New End Theatre. Directed by up and coming young director Adam Barnard, it was one of the successes of this year's Edinburgh Fringe, due, in part, to some well-timed public outrage, probably provided by supportive friends of the cast.

The play's a two-hander set in a preparatory boarding school, and concerns the sexual peccadilloes of two of its masters. The press material would have you believe that it asks deeply relevant questions, presumably in the hope of cashing in on the current paedophile obsession. It doesn't stick. This play
is a gem of juvenilia; a clever twenty-two year old seeing how many times he can say "bum" and still be taken seriously. It is almost surprising then, how seriously Activated Image approach it.

Mark Farrelly, as the young paedophile Dominic, and David Benson, as the senior master, both give performances designed to eke every twinge of sadness from the text. Farrelly's performance in particular is so full of camp pathos that some of his more subtle jokes get lost. Would I have liked more gusto? Well,
yes, but I liked this as well. For what the show lacks in comic bravado, it makes up for with a polish that is rare out here on the Fringe.
These actors are a pleasure to watch; their characterisation is complete and compelling, their every movement contributing to the air of slow failure hanging over the play. Not only that, but when the big comic moments come, they hit their notes perfectly.

Rainbow Network
28th November '02

Rainbow rating: four out of five

There really is no mistaking the genius of Stephen Fry, and in Latin! or, Tobacco and Boys he spins a fine romp of illicitness at a 1970s prep school.

Penned back in 1980 by a young Fry, Latin picked up a Fringe First award and was recently dusted down for a run at this year’s Edinburgh Festival. The current production sees Mark Farrelly and David Benson devilishly deliver the two-hander with lashings of gusto and charm!

Dominic Clarke (Farrelly) is the foppish Latin master at Chartham Park Preparatory, who exudes a passion for both his subject and a certain pupil by the name of Cartwright. When the over zealous awarding of house points to said pupil is uncovered, it’s the elder master Herbert Brookshaw (Benson) who steps in.

Recognising the glaring transparency of Clarke’s plan to marry the headmaster’s daughter, Brookshaw makes an intimate deal. Who knew a wet towel and cricket boots could provide so much late night pleasure?

As the audience you take on the role of the errant pupils, as education and the firm hand of discipline are dispensed in wonderfully camp form. Fry’s trademark wit and penchant for double entendre are on full display here as the tale of young love between schoolmaster and favourite pupil unfolds. Even the somewhat taboo nature of the play’s subject matter is handled with both humour and irony. Indeed, the wrapping of the plot around the bizarre world of an English boarding school is most definitely the key to its success. With tongue placed firmly in cheek, Fry allows the schoolboy humour to take centre stage. Hurrah for back passages, sticky ends and a spot of spanking. This really is high camp, fuss and nonsense stuff!

Both Farrelly and Benson shine in their respective personas, and the simple classroom setting makes for an intimate and thoroughly enjoyable experience. No matter how alien the world of a preparatory Latin class may seem to you, rest assured that Latin, or Tobacco and Boys is all round ‘jolly hockey sticks’ good stuff!

Go to Rainbow Network

Time Out , Dec-2002
Latin! or Tobacco and Boys
by Mark Cook

Urbane and witty actor and novelist Stephen Fry has been in a few plays, and famously departed another, but to do date has only written this one, when he was a 22-year-old Cambridge undergraduate. He could probably pen this slight but chuckle-provoking piece standing on his head these days, but his prep-school-set two-hander does reek of personal experience and bitterness in portraying the love that dare not scrawl its name on the back of the cricket pavilion. Fry's penchant for innuendo in this hothouse of the homoerotic is given free reign: 'The boy who rubs we up the wrong way will come to a sticky end,' bristles Brookshaw, David Benson's moustachioed, elbow-patched senior master, a man who opines that those born British have the right to treat God as a social equal. He pales into insignificance, though, next to charismatic Latin master Mr Clarke, mincing joyfully around the blackboard, until his night-time trysts with a pupil are discovered. His classes, addressed to audience like Joyce Grenfell monologues in which he hurls homework at the punters, are comic highlights in Adam Barnard's enjoyable production.

Beneath the camp and stiff-upper-lippedness, Fry homes in on what makes men take up teaching in private schools - a sense of revenge, maybe, or, more disturbingly in Farrelly's creepily angelic-looking Clarke, the desire to escape the responsibilities of manhood. Escape, it appears, comes in Morocco and conversion to Islam (all revealed in a hilarious letter in exile) which - in light of Brookshaw's assertion, that to be born British and a Christian is to be accorded first prize in the lottery of life - these days has an irony that even the youthful, insightful Fry could never have imagined.

SX Magazine , Dec-2002
Theatre roundup
by James Mullighan

There's a lot more to Stephen Fry than that loveable plumy front. Behind that Jeeves exterior is a radical writer, whose own pained experiences of boarding school has resulted in some controversial literature. None more so than his first play, concerning the depravations of a Latin teacher who gets away with unspeakable acts. Hilarious and disturbing, this much banned play takes on issues that have tripped up many a legislature.

The Evening Standard, 29-Nov-2002
Metro Life preview
by Fiona Mountford

One of the most pleasurable aspects of the annual mayhew that is the Edinburgh Fringe is watching the emergence of a truly outstanding young theatre company. 2002 saw the deserved rise to prominence of Activated Image, under Artistic Director Adam Barnard. A.I. presented two shows north of the border, one of which was this scandal provoking 1980 Fringe First winner from Stephen Fry. A two-hander set in the classics department of a Seventies prep school, Latin! is a result of Fry's razor-sharp wit mixing The Browning Version with Tom Brown's Schooldays, for a tale of pederasty amongst the ablative absolutes.

Is it OK to come out yet, Sir?

Homework: Explain the difference between classical notions of trans-generational male sexuality and modern notions of institutionalised child abuse.

Stephen’s Fry’s satirical take on the sexual predilections of two teachers within an English public school in the 1970s raised the eyebrows of the Establishment when it was premièred at the Edinburgh Festival in 1980. It came away with a Fringe First, no doubt because it also raises as many questions as it does laughs.

Nevertheless, Latin! or Tobacco and Boys sits uncomfortably as a full length play. Performed as a sketch, the politicians and church leaders who lambasted it in 1980 might have been more forgiving. But that’s hardly the point. The play is what it is, and once the blackboard dust has settled on the absurd events portrayed, the realisation sets in that the action’s amorality offers no satisfactory means of resolution.

The witty deliverance of this piece is indisputable. Sexual innuendoes abound as Mark Farrelly’s deliciously effeminate Latin master camps it up over his adoring boys. David Benson is convincing as his veteran pipe-smoking colleague. And John Daniel’s set simply breathes the stifling atmosphere of the whole rotten system.