Three chaps from a long-gone age, float down the Thames singing the Eton Boating Song and Champagne Charlie - no not an election stunt…

Three Men in a Boat
at The Mill at Sonning
until July 30
Review by DEREK ANSELL

First published in 1889, Jerome K Jerome’s novel was an immediate success and has been in print ever since.

Maybe it was the way the book suggested an idyllic life in England at that time with nothing better for three old pals to do than sail up the river Thames to Oxford in a rowing boat and bask in the summer sunshine? In his programme notes, director Joe Harmston points out that although JKJ created a lifestyle craze for boats and boating licences, literature had a different outlook. The decade after Three Men produced novels like War Of The Worlds and Dracula. Did Wells and Bram Stoker know something nobody else did?

Harmston’s production moves the action forward to around 1909 just a few years before the Great War of 1914 and rubs in the point by showing a back projection picture later on of the three men in army uniform looking sombre. This, however, was mostly about his lively production that never for one instant suggests anything but a carefree jaunt up the Thames by three pals.

James Bradshaw played George, the contented but somewhat stuffy bank clerk and George Rigby was effective as the bright and bubbly Harris. George Watkins had fun as the author and narrator, a cheeky chappie full of fun and humour and a little intolerant of anybody outside his own circle that got in his way. I was sorry this production did not include Montmorency the dog, but the three actors took turns to provide his barks and growls along the way.

Difficult indeed to play effectively on stage, the director chose to present all the action casually, engaging the audience at times with the three actors in their boat and off it, playing themselves mostly but now and again breaking into a working man’s dialogue to play lock or inn keepers along the way and even, late on, play four men making outrageous claims about a giant fish they had caught. All claimed the same catch and each man increased the weight and size of the big fish considerably.

It was all great fun with three chaps from a long-gone age, floating down the river singing songs like the Eton Boating Song and Champagne Charlie. They even sang Two Lovely Black Eyes and performed a music hall act at the end.

An enjoyable production that ended cheerfully, even if Harmston insisted on showing that picture of the three in army uniform to remind us about how the world changed forever in 1914.