Review: Adolf & Winston, Tobacco Factory Theatres – ‘Wonderfully inventive’

For those in the know, Living Spit comprise Portishead-based Howard Coggins and Stu Mcloughlin, and they write and perform hilarious spoofs of well-known stories.

However, Coggins is unfortunately recovering from illness and in Adolf & Winston his part has been taken by Craig Edwards, the long time director of many Living Spit shows. Should we be worried? Absolutely not, because this show still delivers the laughs in tank loads with machine gun bursts.

Like two naughty schoolboys, the duo rip into their targets mercilessly. Hitler naturally bears the brunt of the brickbats. And rightfully so! After recreating the classic Yellow Pages advert to find booksellers stocking a copy of Mein Kampf, we next see him working himself up into a lather opposite a fawning Von Ribbentrop, while at the other side of the stage Churchill is soaping himself in his bath. Later, Hitler treats us to a review of his awful watercolours including ridiculously antisemitic drawings alongside a piece described as a ‘bit of fun’ entitled ‘A kitten being blown up in a microwave’.

Adolf & Winston, Living Spit – photo: Graham Burke

However, the principal pleasure is to be had in a 15 minute romp through the ‘Greatest Hits of World War II’ as Mcloughlin and Edwards time themselves to perfection through a series of hilarious songs, dances and almost childlike representations of memorable wartime events, including an evacuation of British troops at Dunkirk involving toy boats. An electronic timer ticks away in the background while they caper through various battles, political characters and disasters. They even sensitively handle The Holocaust.

If you like your humour silly, salty as well as darkly slapstick, this show is for you, and it certainly hit the mark with a very mixed age Tobacco Factory Theatres audience who roared their approval at the end. Deftly using material that is so near to the knuckle but successfully avoiding being crass or callous is no mean feat.

Photo: Graham Burke

In getting an audience to laugh at a ludicrously camp LGBTQ+ Rudolf Hess and an absurd sequence of national stereotypes can only be achieved by performers at the top of their game. Comic timing has always been one of their fortes, and Living Spit know just when the time is right to give the nod that they know what they are doing – and that they are doing it tongue in cheek.

Music and songs feature widely, with the pick of them – A soon to be Dead Dictator – soundtracking the final throes of Hitler and Eva Braun in the bunker, with Von Ribbentrop backing up on organ before being replaced by a full on anthemic orchestration.

Photo: Graham Burke

Using a stage set only with two desks and two chairs, both performers work overtime to conjure up a whole series of wonderfully inventive scenes, and both exhibit superb syncopated movement and timing. I detected a new line in surreptitious sideways glances worth the admission money alone.

A show like this deserves to be seen by as many people as possible and particularly by lovers of risqué anarchic humour.

Adolf & Winston is at Tobacco Factory Theatres on November 1-12 at 8pm, with additional 2pm matinee shows on November 1, 5, 10 and 12. Tickets are availabe at www.tobaccofactorytheatres.com.

Main photo: Graham Burke

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