“We’ve gorn on holiday by mistake!”
The cult British film, ‘Withnail and I’, is to be adapted for the West End stage. This is very good news, and may be enough to encourage me to visit that there London for the first time in years.
I’m surprised that a stage adaptation wasn’t made years ago. The film script is a masterpiece, and the claustrophobic interiors of the sordid flat and squalid cottage where most of the scenes take place ideal for a theatre production. I’m sure that there are enough Withnail obsessives out there to ensure that a play will run for years to packed houses.
There’s only one problem. The Withnail role is apparently to be played by the prematurely balding Jude Law. Fine actor Law may be, but his Withnail can only be a pale imitation of the splenetic character portrayed by Richard E Grant. Richard E Grant IS Withnail: no one else can fill his shoes.
Admittedly he’s a bit old for the role, but his hollow eyed, cadaverous, Withnail wasn’t exactly the exemplification of hale and hearty youth in the first place.
Someone should start a petition or something.
5 comments:
I've always wanted to see the movie but never come across it.
I don't know if London will ever be the same if you go visit. You're not taking your chainsaw are you?
REG has been in a couple of my favourite movies, Gosford Park, The Corpse Bride.
Jude Law is too pretty.
Duh, Kyah, get it out on DVD or download it or join an arthouse cinema if they have them out in the wilds of prairie, or something. Immediately. If not sooner.
Seriously, it gives a so-far unsurpassed insight into that slightly sordid middle class educated-but-destitute Britishness that only we can do. Utter genius.
Monty, you terrible cunt!
Plus, you shoud read REG's film diaries - With Nails.
Fork it!
Agreed, Richard E Grant would be the only Withnail. And Richard Griffiths could only do Uncle Monty. Great film. Currently on offer in HMV - do yourself a favour and buy it if you haven't already got it.
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