Withnail and I reviews round-up at Birmingham Rep

"Spot-on staging is manic fun"

"Bruce Robinson’s adaptation of his classic film gambols along at the Birmingham Rep, banishing memories of its original cast"

"Bruce Robinson’s adaptation of his own film, one of the funniest of British comedies, still delivers plenty of manic fun — yes, even without the irreplaceable Richard E Grant in the role of Withnail, the unemployed thespian and drink-sodden master of misrule. The Irish actor Robert Sheehan lacks Grant’s imperious voice but as he staggers about from one self-inflicted mishap to another, a glass never far from his lips, we gradually fall for his dubious charms. Adonis Siddique, as his long-suffering friend Marwood, is very good value too. "

"Sean Foley’s production gambols along. It was a clever decision to add a live band which occasionally takes centre stage and also supplies a Sixties soundtrack from behind the scenes."

"Sticking closely to the original screenplay means there are an awful lot of scene changes but they’re mostly done with aplomb. Alice Power’s designs make imaginative use of scrims to conjure up the different locations alongside Akhila Krishnan’s atmospheric video projections and Jessica Hung Han Yun’s lighting. Hardcore fans can rest assured that the battered Jaguar Mark 2 makes an appearance too, albeit in sawn-off form."

"An entertaining and well-crafted show"

"The key to why this film is so well-loved, it's the fact it is so darn quotable. It's one of those movies that, if you love it, you probably love every last line of it."

"And this is what made it such a tough nut to crack. It was always going to garner a good audience but that audience was clearly a mixture of people who had never seen it before sat alongside those who knew it word for word. "

"Robert Sheehan as Withnail earns shrieks of approval"

"A strong cast and a magical set make this more or less word-for-word stage transfer of the cult hit an entertaining tribute piece"

"Robinson’s script, which he has adapted himself, has a pleasing aphoristic quality but it is not exactly Oscar Wilde."

"The backstage crew do a tremendous job facilitating the magical transformations of Alice Power’s set, which is given extra depth by Akhila Krishnan’s large-scale video. It adds up to a bright, crowd-pleasing show, playing to fans of the original without tinkering with the formula that made it such a sleeper hit"

"Entertaining, satisfyingly skewed sitcom"

"Dynamically staged and energetically performed adaptation of Bruce Robinson’s cult film"

"Wallowing more in nostalgia than drug and drink-induced dissipation, this cheerful stage version – adapted by Robinson and directed by Sean Foley – follows the original beat for beat. All the most quotable moments are intact, frequently drawing cheers from the clued-in audience. But it all feels safe and somehow sanitised, lacking the scuzzy charm and reckless momentum of the film."

"Foley’s staging is vigorous and inventive, smoothing off the story’s rougher edges with a high-tempo pacing and a fun, flippant tone. Every scene ends on a familiar punchline, and the talented actor-musician ensemble inject even more energy with live accompaniment, breaking into driving Hendrix riffs and groovy snatches of the Doors and the Kinks."

"It all rattles by at breezy pace, and although the play lacks the acidity and bite of the film, this remains an entertaining, satisfyingly skewed sitcom packed with eminently quotable lines that will linger in your head like an unshakeable hangover."

"Spin-off doesn’t quite nail it"

"Bruce Robinson – who wrote and directed the screenplay – has himself shaped this spin-off, albeit it’s a cut and paste exercise rather than an adventurous reinvention."

"Sheehan has a swaggering dandy air, but lacks tangible insecurity and career envy, you miss Grant’s snarling smile and hysteric desolation. Siddique, sometimes addressing his narration out to us, is more of a tag-along figure, who only comes into his own when Monty makes his moves. As the latter, Malcolm Sinclair is little like the grunting porcine Richard Griffiths, but combines broad strokes with a subtler wistful calibration."

"It gives me no pleasure to report such underwhelmed tidings. If the initiated attend this as if were some tribute night, whereby some of the most familiar lines (“We want the finest wines available to humanity…”) and salient scenelets (viz “the Camberwell carrot”) are mechanically enacted, for expected cheers, then it serves a function. But something has gone awry when the closing quotations from Hamlet sound no great depths of psychological angst. To borrow a line from Shakespeare’s play – “the readiness is all”. The sober truth is that this doesn’t feel ready."

"Sean Foley’s production serves up an ersatz version of the cult film"

"This is adaptation as imitation, so blindly devoted to the source that it retains its own mildew and musty air. By the end, that lighter fluid no longer seems so unappealing."