Four Funerals and a Wedding plays the Bread and Roses Theatre as part of the Lambeth Fringe
“You just need to get the vicar a sherry afterwards”
It’s a bold move to take as beloved a classic as Four Weddings and a Funeral and decide to revamp it for fringe theatre. But that’s where we are with Four Funerals and a Wedding, a curious compendium of short plays and skits variously written by Sally Sheringham, Richard Fitchett, Wally Sewell and Liam O’Grady covering love and loss, life and death, and a whole lot inbetween.
Five short plays are interlaced with brief monologues from our Celebrant, the Reverend Williams newly of St Mary’s, Written by Wally Sewell and performed by Jeremy Drakes, these are very wittily observed, even Alan Bennett-like, in their everyday observations and dryly comic takes on parish life. I could watch a whole play about the West Window but much of its effectiveness comes in the way it is sprinkled throughout here.
The plays themselves are something of a mixed bag, so varied that you could almost question the source inspiration for some of them. Sheringham’s Something ’bout you, baby is delightful as it captures a sweet moment between an anxious bride and her equally nervous father, trying to stop her from doing a runner by doling out some of the essential truths of how life isn’t always picture-perfect.
Fitchett’s Saint or Sinner takes us a touch into the surreal as a grieving daughter learns the reality of the family business that has provided her gilded lifestyle, both from her mother who is next to her and from her father who is on the phone whilst queueing to get into heaven. There’s also a group of emperor penguins, attempted flirtation over a reconditioned Morris Minor and strained sisterly relations – a real grab-bag.
Anthony Shrubsall directs with a keen eye for emotional resonance and the company of Edmund Dehn, Karen McCaffrey, Peter Saracen, Megan Stander and Fiona Tong cover multiple roles with a range of distinct characterisations. There’s good work here, especially in the Celebrant series, but the cumulative effect should do more to truly honour the source material for its inspiration.