A packed New Theatre welcomed Cardiff’s first showing of director Paul Hart’s play Spike this Tuesday evening. Taking the audience through the ascent of the 1950s radio hit The Goon Show, the play covers all the successes and troubles it faced.

The clever stage design, with an illuminated platform overhead, allows the play to switch between scenes. The opening scene sets the hilarious tone. Margaret Cabourn-Smith, as Janet, introduces the audience to the BBC’s makeshift sound effects board, which features horseshoes, a hot water bottle, a leather handbag of nuts and bolts, and, most esoterically, a sock of custard. Covering the ‘golden age of radio’, Spike goes on to document and mock the advances of radio technology.

The tormented Spike Milligan, played tremendously by Robert Wilfort, is a hardworking, underpaid yet dedicated comedian. Suffering PTSD, he channels his experiences of war into comedy sketches. Constantly doubting his writing capabilities, he also battles what we now might call imposter syndrome – which comes to the fore in a brilliant mime scene where he types ferociously and throws out heaps of drafts.

Milligan’s ‘war with the BBC’ in the 1950s mirrors his time on the front line in the 1940s. Flashbacks to Milligan’s experiences in combat come at fitting times and with smooth transitions, launching us from the BBC radio studio to WWII battlegrounds, and back again to the Grafton Arms. The annoyance shared between Milligan and the BBC is equal on both parts: Milligan is frustrated by the BBC’s conventionality while the BBC is tested by the Goon star’s farce. The persistence of his fight against the BBC’s uptight head of comedy, who fails to accommodate his unconventional humour even while listeners worship it, eventually leads to a breakdown. Nevertheless, comedy remains Milligan’s default, cracking jokes from his hospital bed and with a noose around his neck.

In the background of The Goon Show’s journey during the play lingers the relationship between Milligan and wife June Marlow – a love story, then a marital breakdown – and references to Milligan’s upbringing. The only thing his father taught him, we hear, was that the world is run by idiots, building upon his complex character.  

Helped no doubt by movement director Anjali Mehra, Wilfort captures the capering energy of the 1950s comedy icon. Jeremy Lloyd’s take on Welshman Harry Secombe – with his tenor voice, signature giggle, and flamboyance – is admirable, and the mockery of his Welshness chimes with this Cardiff audience. Patrick Warner portrays Peter Sellers, dexterously showcasing his store of voices. Together Wilfort, Lloyd, and Warner play a believable tribute to the original Goon Show trio even if Milligan is the maverick star of the show, working himself “into an early grave to make Sellers famous”. Mention must go to Goon Show producer Dennis Main Wilson, played by James Mack: loyal and patient, he defends the programme’s slot in the conventional, censor-abiding, and education-obsessed BBC agenda.

The audience receives Milligan’s one-liners with hysteric laughs (a favoured punchline involves Milligan’s telling of the time via the scrap paper of paper he keeps in his pocket); certainly, light-hearted dark humour characterises Spike. Doubtless my understanding of some jokes and intertextual references would have benefited from lived experience of 1950s Goon mania – but it’s clear the cast and crew of this production have done Ian Hislop and Nick Newman’s script proud. 

Spike, New Theatre, Cardiff, Tue 22 Nov.

On until Sat 26 Nov. Tickets: £21.50-£39. Info: here

words EVE DAVIES