CAUGHT IN THE ACT by Trevor Cowper
Venue: Richmond 1981
Directed by Roger Redfarn

Cast
Martin Jarvis
Judy Geeson
Peter Blythe
Geoffrey Colvile
Michael Walker
Helen Gill

Article on arrival in the West End

Martin Jarvis’ skill as a farceur in Trevor Cowper’s Caught In The Act at the Garrick may come as a surprise to theatregoers unfamiliar with his long-running TV comedy series Rings On Their Fingers.  His diverse roles in the theatre have stamped him as versatile, but with the emphasis on the serious, even the classical. One of his first parts in London, when at the early age of 18 he was lucky enough to appear with the National Youth Theatre and to play Henry V at Sadler’s Wells, prompted Harold Hobson to say, “more will be heard of this actor, though not necessarily in this role”.  On TV he achieved notable success as Uriah Heep in David Copperfield and the title role in Nicholas Nickleby, while his performance as Jon in The Forsyte Saga won him a worldwide following. Lovely parts all, but like his appearances on stage, including Man and Superman, The Spoils of Poynton, Hamlet in Martin Jenkins’ production at  the Theatre Royal, Windsor, and the 1976 revival of The Circle at Chichester and Haymarket, not exactly lightweight. Which is why he’s happy to be letting his burnished hair down in the Bill Kenwright-Charles Ross production.

“I always try to move on from the thing I’ve done before. I’ve done light comedy on TV and comedy on stage, but never the lightweight, commercial kind which is perhaps the hardest of all, and it was nice to be asked. I like doing it, the contact with the audiences and the feedback that one gets. Comedy to me is like going out fishing with your rod; in the loch is the monster, which may be a nice monster or not so nice, but it is there under the water. That’s what I feel an audience is; I always listen before the curtain goes up to their sound. Then I think ‘I’ve got to go fishing for that audience tonight to see whether I can catch this great big difficult fish that might swim away, might come back, seem about to be caught, and then swim away again'. We are like a team of fishermen – a company playing a comedy of this sort. That’s why it’s exciting”.