Round The Horne – Kings’ Theatre, Edinburgh
Shut your eyes and you could’ve been at home next to the wireless any time between 1965 and 1968. Along with the 14.5 million other listeners of the day. Which makes it difficult to write about this show; it was so faithful to the original that instead of judging the set or evaluating the performance(s), one spent most of the time simply wondering - nay marvelling – at the unabashed nature of Round The Horne, its refusal to dodge a risk (spelled r-i-s-q-u-é) and, ultimately, the BBC’s willingness to defend it from its many (historically, theatrically ignorant) detractors. It’s sobering to remind oneself that some of the boundaries of taste and sexuality over which it gaily skipped were, at the time, enshrined in law.
Listening to a couple of the shows either side of this production (you...