Ceiling's many flaws

The book, spattered with blood of mauled reputations, of plays and players torn to shreds in revenge for the mental and physical torment caused to an innocent theatre-goers like me, is unsuitable for those of a sensitive, humane or humorous disposition. So, too, is the comedy-lite On the Ceiling.

The ceiling in question is the Sistine Chapel's in 1512. Two Italians who have been helping Michelangelo with his frescoes have become as bored as we soon will be by the caper.

"This is a fiasco, a frescoe fiasco," observes Ron Cook's petulant, temperamental Lapo to the young, mild Loti (Ralf Little), thereby, giving early warning of what fails to pass for humour in Planer's play.

"Who does Michelangelo think she f***ing is?" The allusion to the presumed homosexual painter as "she" is just the first of the verbal and stylistic anachronisms with which On the Ceiling is infested like fleas on a mangy, old dog.

Planer has hit upon the idea of making Lapo and Loti sound like 21st-century English labourers, stranded in the 16th-century Sistine chapel and given a bit of higher knowledge. "You can't teach someone virtue. Plato said that, too," Lapo remarks for no good or funny reason.

Like Beckett's two tramps, but without a milligram of their pathos or humour, the men idle and vaguely labour around, waiting for someone like Michelangelo to turn up and pay them.

Nothing happens at length while they chat, work a little and sing. "I am a Pope and a big one, too," is one of the wittier lyrics. You can overhear a better class of comic repartee on the tube.

When fired, Lapo becomes glumly aware he will never win glory for having been responsible for painting "some toes, a buttock and half a medallion".

The audience's experience is rather similar. We came expecting the body of a play and got no more than a buttock.

On the Ceiling, under Jennie Darnell's direction, emanates from the modish, impressive Birmingham Repertory Theatre. I really cannot imagine why they troubled us with this piffle.

On The Ceiling