This is fast-talking, wise-cracking American comedy, of the style brought to a world audience during the Golden Age of Hollywood.
First produced in 1928, The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles Macarthur is the play that became the film His Girl Friday, starring Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant.
Set in a Chicago courthouse newsroom at the eve of an execution, it’s satire of cynical journalists, police officers and politicians is nothing new now (though still it rings true.)
This production, directed and adapted by Nicholas Papademetriou, has a beautiful bouncy, brassy spirit. Except for the opening scene, which on the night I attended lost necessary pace because of line stumbles and awkward props, the show honours the grand comic tradition of which it is part.
Papademetriou follows the lead of the writers of His Girl Friday and makes the play’s protagonist a woman. Hildy has worked for The Examiner for years, and though it’s a man’s world, she is clearly their ace reporter. However, with the offer of marriage to a respectable man, she’s tempted by the quiet of domesticity.
Can she leave the game behind? Her boss, Walter, wants her to stay, for more reasons than one.
Rose Treloar as Hildy is extraordinary. Rosalind Russell would be proud. From the moment she enters, Treloar’s energy is stellar, and she drives the production with a gloriously assured exuberance.
Andrew Waldin as Walter is brisk and nimble, and achieves that most difficult of comic tasks: the portrayal of a charming con-man.
The large supporting cast generally does good work. Let me cherry pick just a few favourite performances. Diego Retamales as the man on death row is superb, his physical comedy top class. Callum Stephen slips into the shoes of the ex-gangster with such laughter-inducing ease that we readily believe the character has helped many a chump slip on shoes of the concrete variety. Braydon May, as a messenger in the Governor’s employ, works the classic trope of the pedant in a world of action with hilarious effect. Georgia Nicholas as the only other female reporter in the newsroom has a wonderful stage presence, positioned perfectly in regard to Hildy’s energy, and establishing with tight rope precision the competing needs created by a patriarchal environment, the requirement for both female feistiness and sisterly support.
Brash, buoyant, confident, this is comic theatre with old school swagger.
Paul Gilchrist
The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles Macarthur (adapted by Nicholas Papademetriou)
at New Theatre until 18 May
Image by Chris Lundie
Theatre Red 
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