Rhymes with Purple are a small young company from Glasgow who develop their own scripts and operate on a shoe-string budget without public funding. Waiting for Groucho has been written by Louise Oliver, one of the company, who also takes a supporting role in this combination of Beckett and Vaudeville. The show is presented as an imagined conversation in which the Marx brothers reminisce on their journey to become Hollywood legends.
Now: a confession. I know next to nothing about the Marx brothers, so cant comment on how faithful the representations of Chico (Ben Allison), Harpo (Alan McPartlan) and Groucho (Frodo McDaniel) are, and whether they will appeal to the purists out there. For the uninitiated like me, it offers a decent introductory biography on their rise to fame. The events of the past are played out in flashback as Chico and Harpo wait for Groucho to turn up for one last performance. It was an interesting idea to combine this frustrated Godot-like waiting with the replays, but one that I didnt feel was realised entirely successfully. Because the action jumps across 50 years its didnt really enough room to show how the characters had changed over the years.
Overall the effect is mixed. The laughs just dont quite come fast enough, and I would have liked to have seen the company take on more of the physical comedy - at the beginning and mid-way through they show this potential. McDaniel gives a solid performance as Groucho, but that in some ways is the problem it is just a bit too solid and not lively enough. While Allison has decent presence as Chico, his accent is all over the place. Credit goes to McPartlan this was a very effective performance as the silent Harpo.