Catch-22

Touring

4/5

ANYONE who has tried to buy a discount ticket from the privatised railways can thank Joseph Heller for giving us a term for an inescapable system that guarantees you can’t win — Catch 22.

Northern Stage is touring its new theatre adaptation of Heller’s best-selling second world war novel and it is well worth sitting through the show’s three-hour running time.

We’re forewarned of the show’s length but it’s quickly forgotten as we’re thrown into the absurdist world of US pilot Yossarian and his lone struggle to survive the war when everyone is out to kill him. 

John Bausor’s impressive set consists of the interior and wing of a US bomber angled as if ascending into the air, which throughout is put to use in the often frenetic pace of action.

Scott Twynham’s sound design literally shakes the auditorium with deafening
bombers flying overhead and then seduces with an onstage gramophone crackling
with big band nostalgia.

In the opening, Yossarian faces an inquisition by his commanding officers for successfully destroying a bridge because he flew over it twice. The pattern of insanity is set and never lets up.

Philip Arditti — who bears an uncanny likeness to a young Alan Arkin, the actor who played Yossarian in the 1970 film — brings his very own charismatic intensity, defiance and angst to the young pilot trying to survive against the odds.

Around him the cast are uniformly excellent. Heller’s story is well populated with the eccentric and demented and the actors switch roles in an instant, sometimes several times in a scene. 

Director Rachel Chavkin whips up kinetic and comedic energy as the actors inhabit a succession of Heller’s uniquely barking characters.

Michael Hodgson is astonishingly good in three roles — the ambitious and corrupt Colonel Cathcart, twitching, snarling and drawling his way toward promotion at the cost of his men, as an explosively delusional psychiatrist with hilarious movements accentuating his full-blown insanity and as an Italian brothel owner who reduces a naive young US pilot’s illusions of moral certainty with the gleeful cynicism of a survivor.

Victoria Bewick shines both as a fiery young prostitute falling in love with a pilot and as Yossarian’s nurse and sweetheart battling against his existential terror, while David Webber perfectly distills the cowardice of Major Major and the refined bureaucratic cynicism of Korn.

The dramatic arc seems to sag a little after the interval, although the climactic scene when Yossarian tries to save a mortally wounded young crewman is powerfully moving. 

While the ensuing finale almost feels superfluous, that’s a minor quibble when there are so many highlights in the production, not least the synchronised ’40s-style dance routines and a philosophical depth and political relevance in the script — witness Yossarian complaining that he went to fight for his country but found everyone trying to make a buck. It was never more so.

Tours nationally until June 22, details: www.northernstage.co.uk.