Hardly has geeky Sam Pyke arrived at St Ethelred’s public school for the sons of superior gentlemen than he finds himself caught up in the twilight world of The Dark Circle. Dastardly Middle-Eastern plotters, with whom suspicion-inducing Kamal of the Lower Fifth (Matthew Runham) is shadily involved, threaten what Britain holds dearest of all — its indecently large Empire.
Things are not much better in class where strange Mr Pratt (Mark Farrelly) in gown, mortarboard and a rather camp manner, issues a warning that "boys who rub me up the wrong way will come to a sticky end". I am not sure, though, about the significance of the queer, foreign gamekeeper or the endless barrage of gay innuendos about fagging and beastliness.
Still, I’m a sucker for the simplicities of spoofing satire that makes fun of those Boys Own Comics of the 1920s: plucky, spunky schoolboys get up to no end of good in a jingoistic world where only clean-spirited Englishmen have the right ideas. So I liked the ingenuity, underlying seriousness and political bias of Glenn Chandler’s Boys of the Empire, inspired by Robert Fisk’s The Great War for Civilisation: The conquest of the Middle East.
Chandler relates the pre-Second World War, public school ethos that ensured our boys went out to help rule bits of the world convinced that Britain always knows best to Winston Churchill’s controversial, early 1920s role as Colonial Secretary in the creation of Iraq — then as now occupied by our troops. The schoolboys’ adventure story and their capture by the Dark Circle generates the main, sustained amusement.
The show scales preposterous heights but Chandler disarms criticism by making it clear these dramatic incidents are weekly episodes in a Boy’s Own magazine. Today’s terrorists in Iraq are linked with those fighting to save their country from Britain in the 1920s. Patrick Wilde’s production needs a cooler, less coarse comedic touch — Christopher Birks as Pyke offers a gross parody of geekiness. The show, though, has a rare charm.
Until 11 January (0844 412 2953)
Boys Of The Empire
King's Head, Islington
Upper Street, Islington, N1 1QN
