Ealing Studios’ 1951 comedy of bowler-hatted banking and congenial criminality has been newly minted for the stage. But Jeremy Sams’ jovial touring production is often curiously leaden. While the film was a model of taut storytelling, with a slyly humorous portrait of postwar Britain and bravura suspense, Phil Porter’s adaptation is bogged down by its narrative device.
Mild-mannered London bank clerk Henry Holland (Miles Jupp) has reached Rio after masterminding a heist of gold bullion smuggled in the form of Eiffel Tower paperweights. His caper is told not as a straight flashback but re-enacted by his pals in a Brazilian bar (on New Year’s Eve, for added jollity). Scenes are cumbersomely set up, with the friends cast in roles and given notes, making Holland – originally portrayed with finely tuned expressions by Alec Guinness – rather verbose.
