One Man, Two Guvnors: Charles Spencer's original review of the play that made James Corden a star

The National Theatre will begin its programme of National Theatre At Home live-streams tonight (April 2), from 7pm, with One Man, Two Guvnors. (See the NT's YouTube channel for further details.)

The play, a Carlo Goldoni adaptation directed by Nicholas Hytner and written by Richard Bean, starred James Corden, then best known for writing and acting in the BBC comedy Gavin and Stacey. It first ran at the National in 2011, before transferring to the West End.

The Telegraph’s Charles Spencer reviewed both productions that year, giving them four and then a revised five stars. His two reviews, which ran in the newspaper at the opening of each production, are reprinted below.

The original review (May 25, 2011)

The NT has the feelgood hit of the summer on its hands with Richard Bean’s inspired and deliriously funny adaptation of The Servant of Two Masters by the Italian playwright Carlo Goldoni (1707-1793).

The original is that rare thing, a genuinely amusing piece of commedia dell’arte. But Bean has dispensed with the period Italian setting and relocated the action to Brighton in 1963, with many of the characters now members of the criminal underworld of that splendidly louche seaside town.

Better yet, he has infused the show with a string of terrific jokes and comic routines of his own, while Nicholas Hytner’s production has a madcap joie de vivre and prodigally witty invention about it that proves irresistible.

The show’s crowning glory is James Corden, now best known for the TV comedy Gavin and Stacey, but who first made his name at the National in Alan Bennett’s The History Boys.

In a loud check suit that recalls his character’s roots as Harlequin, he plays a skiffle muso who has been sacked from his band and finds employment with both a young woman disguised as her own dead twin brother (don’t ask) and the posh public-school silly ass she loves – even though he killed her sadistic gangster of a twin. Neither is aware that they are in the same town, still less that they are both employing the same man as their inefficient minder.

Corden, with a face like an enormous potato and a physical dexterity that is astonishing in one so corpulent, brings a winningly warm and harassed humanity to the role. He constantly button-holes the audience with asides and ad-libs, and turns the play’s great set piece in which he simultaneously serves dinner to his two masters into one of the most uproarious scenes of farcical comedy I have ever witnessed. He is brilliantly abetted by Tom Edden as a doddery ancient waiter who suffers no end of humiliation and keeps falling down the stairs. During this set-piece I found myself physically helpless with laughter.

There’s great support right through the ranks with particularly fine work from Jemima Rooper, both sexy and endearing as the-cross dressing heroine, Oliver Chris as the hilarious, hirsute twerp she loves and Daniel Rigby as a deliciously pretentious wannabe actor. Add a cracking on stage skiffle band and ingenious designs by Mark Thompson and you have an evening of riotous delight.

The West End transfer (November 22, 2011)

I know we are enduring the scariest financial climate most of us can remember, but if you can possibly manage it, do try to scrape together the wherewithal to buy tickets for you and your loved ones to see the glorious One Man, Two Guvnors.

It has just transferred from the National Theatre to the West End and for almost three blissful hours cares are forgotten and gnawing anxieties put aside as you surrender to great waves of healing laughter. It is absolute bliss.

Richard Bean’s script is a bang-on-the-money mixture of wisecracks, sight gags, and fiendish moments of audience participation. The jokes and verbal sallies just keep on coming, while the cast give every impression of enjoying themselves as much as the audience without slipping into the ill-disciplined self-indulgence that can kill comedy stone dead.

Presiding over the mayhem is James Corden as Francis Henshall, a fat, potato-faced, perpetually hungry jack-the-lad who finds himself working for two bosses. He converses with the audience as if we were old mates down the pub, tumbles over furniture while catching peanuts in his mouth, and in one sequence beats himself up with wild abandon because he’s suffering an identity crisis. He is continuously funny and endearing.

In the play’s greatest scene, one of the most hilarious I have ever seen in a theatre, he simultaneously serves dinner to his two guvnors while reserving large quantities of food for himself, aided and abetted by an ancient and doddery waiter (the sublimely comical Tom Edden) who keeps falling down the stairs, and a member of the audience who suffers no end of humiliations. If you don’t laugh at this scene it can only be because you have already expired with mirth at the show’s previous gags.

But this is far from being a one-man show. Oliver Chris is possibly even funnier than Corden as a semi-psychotic public school twit who comes out with lines such as, “Buzz-wam! Wrap his nuts in bacon and send him to the Nurse”. Jemima Rooper is hugely engaging as the heroine, disguised as her dead gangster of a twin brother (don’t ask); Daniel Rigby offers a superb turn as a preposterous, self-regarding actor, while Suzie Toase brings a good-humoured warmth to the stage as the woman who falls for Henshall’s well-padded charms.

If you wanted to carp, you might grumble that the second act of Nicholas Hytner’s whizz-bang production, complete with a cracking on-stage skiffle band, isn’t quite as funny as the first, but frankly the mood of hilarity is by then so infectious that you don’t actually notice.

Grit your teeth, increase your credit card bill and briefly forget your cares at the funniest show in town.

The Telegraph’s theatre critic Dominic Cavendish will be live-watching the National Theatre at Home recording on Monday evening: join him online then and send your thoughts