What’s Wrong With Benny Hill? review – a vivid reminder of what millions once found hilarious

White Bear theatre, London
Mark Carey’s play asks why the former best-loved man on TV has been so thoroughly expunged from our comedy pantheon – but doesn’t have a great deal to add

TV has mined a rich seam of golden-age comedian biopics – but Benny Hill has yet to be afforded the posthumous privilege. That’s partly the point of this stab in that direction by Mark Carey, which asks why Hill has been so thoroughly expunged from our comedy pantheon. The reasons are widely known, of course, and rehearsed again here: the former best-loved man on television traded in a humour many modern viewers find sexist, racist and sad. One might hope for greater insight from a 100-minute play on the subject but, for all the pleasures along the way, it doesn’t have a great deal to add.

Carey’s play with songs flashes back through Hill’s life from his last days as a “mad recluse” talking to a visiting solicitor about his will. With all other roles played with spirit by Georgie Taylor, we meet Hill’s dad “the Captain”, who sold “rubber johnnies” for a living, and find Benny writing letters to his auntie from the cafes he frequented in France. Between scenes, a babble of online voices debates his vexed legacy. Taylor takes on an occasional narrator role as a Ben Elton-alike 80s comic, whose generation here stands accused of cruelly – and hypocritically – casting Hill beyond the entertainment pale.