Many, many moons ago I remember sitting at home with the family, howling with laughter on a Friday night at the antics of René Artois and the rest of the ‘Allo ‘Allo crew so when I was offered the opportunity to come and review Kirby Muxloe Players’ production I was rather happy. I know now, with maturity and a little bit more wisdom, that ‘Allo ‘Allo would very probably be frowned upon these days for some of its inappropriate themes and jokes but it needs to be remembered that David Croft and Jeremy Lloyd wrote it to make fun of the serious show “Secret Army” – of which I have zero recollection (well I was only a young teen when ‘Allo ‘Allo was at its peak) and that it was a creation of its time.

This evening my sidekick was my husband who, despite being younger than me, remembers the humour and premise of this iconic 80s comedy. As we arrived, we were greeted by the lovely accordion playing of Jamie Tuckwood which immediately set the mood. We took our seats and were transported to the interior of Café Artois via a set cleverly designed and created by Rob, Colin, Frank, Jane and Chris. Most of the action takes place in the main area of the café and is kicked off by René breaking the fourth wall to introduce all the key elements to any audience members who may not know or remember them from all those decades ago.

Andy Marmoy’s depiction of the hard-done-by café owner was fabulous and “just right”. As with when I reviewed The Mirror Crack’d recently the lead role is too ingrained in my mind to be played any other way and “just right” means that Marmoy did justice to Gordon Kaye’s portrayal and made him believable. His humour hit well and he reignited some of my childhood memories and the hubby and I chuckled throughout.

The rest of the cast also brought believability and fun to my evening out. Whilst some of the humour is sexist it is also funny to watch the way that this poor café owner is bossed about by the women in his life – René’s wife Edith (Jane Pallatt), his two ‘bits on the side’ Yvette (Olivia Dracup) & Mimi Labonq (H Mclaren-Frost) and “I shall say this only once” Michelle (Lynsey Jones), the leader of the resistance all help to keep René on his toes and dancing on the edge in danger of being shot. All four of these ladies danced around each other and played their parts well and, again, many of those long forgotten memories came flooding back…..the step stool so that Mimi could embrace René, the way Edith would try to seduce René and the “fainting” when Yvette is caught in a secret embrace and the really awful plans made by Michelle were just a few I had forgotten about.

Following the women in René’s life come the men. The not so disguised “It’s Me,” Leclerc (Chris Simpson) Colonel Von Strohm (Brian Cross) with his very dodgy wiglet and his sidekick, Alberto “whata-mistaka-to-make” Bertorelli (David Sadler) managed to bounce the jokes well between them as did Graham Hall as Von Schmelling and David Stevens’ Gruber. These chaps had the slightly harder job of staying in their German or Italian accents (which I think are harder to do than French accents) and, occasionally it slipped or a punchline was lost in the accent but, overall, these chaps did a fab job.

Talking of accents – we have to mention Officer Crabtree (Nigel Baraclough) who I think had the hardest part of all as the British man pretending to be a French Gendarme but getting the French accent completely wrong. There is one thing putting on an accent but having to learn a script where the words themselves are wrong to make the accent wrong is tough. Well done to Baraclough who had me as confused as Arthur Bostrom did in the TV series.

Finally to the pairing of Helga (Hannah French) and Herr Flick (Richard French). I know there is a real-life connection between this pairing and that made the characters such fun to watch. Hannah’s “allowed kiss” is hilarious and I don’t think it would have worked so well had she not been actually married to Richard in real life. I also suspect that it may have started as a real quick peck before gradually becoming the full on snogfest (did I just write that?) that we see on stage.

The final bit of hilarity is the continual appearance of the two British airmen. (Emily Long and Sarah Hubbard) who appear from a variety of places around the set whenever the airmen are mentioned. Lots of fun with this running gag throughout – especially when they were selling ice creams in the interval still in character.

Due to the way the café is created there is limited access into the wings for scene changes and, with the onstage cast filing their way out of the only door this did make for some clunky scene changes whilst a central piece of scenery was brought in on a truck for those out-of- café scenes. In my opinion these changes would be smoother if they centralised the truck (it was off centre which my OCD whimpered at) hid the café with the tabs (which didn’t happen because of being off centre) and kept the cast members on stage or file them off during that scene if they weren’t needed in the next café section. The other little frustration is the need to move the bistro tables back behind the tabs at various points before moving them back again once those scenes were over. I just wanted them to be left on the front of the stage to reduce scene change time. However, these little niggles aside, the changed sets added to the fun of the show – especially the rather interesting non-inflating inflatable! I am also hoping that these were just opening night niggles that will get better throughout the run.

Overall KMP, directed by Mike Blasdale, have created a funny reminder of (some of) our youth and it did have us sniggering (sometimes out loud) all the way through. Well done KMP and thank you for the nostalgia.

‘Allo ‘Allo runs until Saturday 9^th May and tickets can be bought here.

Tickets donated for an honest review.