Review of the stage revival of the 1990s sitcom

Stage adaptations of classic comedies have enjoyed something of a purple patch in recent years, courtesy of Fawlty Towers, the Only Fools And Horses musical and, soon to open in the West End, Yes Minister - as developed by Cirencester’s Barn Theatre.

The same Gloucestershire venue is behind this revival of Men Behaving Badly, although it might not be quite such an obvious choice for a reappraisal. Despite being immensely popular in its heyday, the laddish sitcom seems so rooted in the 1990s that it feels like a period piece now. 

As if to underline the point, this extended episode is set on Millennium Eve – a year after the last episode of the TV series – offering a chance to lean further into the nostalgia of the preceding decade, underlined with a montage of pictures of pop culture figures from the era like Jet from Gladiators and Mr Blobby, and medley of karaoke songs to cover the interval.

The chance to relive that era seems to be the show’s raison d’être, and it doesn’t really hold up as a play in its own right, with the cast and script – by series creator  Simon Nye – feeling like they are  just going through the motions.

The convoluted jeopardy, which isn’t very strongly applied, has feckless Gary and  Dorothy facing the prospect of not getting an inheritance if they are not married before their second child is born.  We shouldn’t ask what precise morals the aunt has that she’ll let one child out of wedlock slide but not two. Meanwhile Tony has 24 hours to woo Deborah before she vanishes back to Australia to tend to kangaroos in need. 

The cast largely do impressions of the originals – especially Matt Howdon, who is the vocal spit of Neil Morrissey as dim-witted Tony.  Tricia Adele-Turner’s Debs channels  Leslie Ash, while Ellie Nunn’s Dorothy is close in spirit to Caroline Quentin’s long-suffering Debs, though not a carbon copy. On the other hand,  Ross Carswell doesn’t attempt to ape Martin Clunes’ Gary, which means the show sits in an uncanny valley of neither being a direct facsimile of the TV show nor its own creation.

On the topic of the original cast, Morrissey appears via video as the spirit of Tony Future, delivering a rather heavy-handed acknowledgment of how things have changed in the world of gender politics in the ensuing quarter-century. The world, he notes, is now divided into ‘porn-fuelled incel misogyny or finger-wagging wokery’. 

Writer Nye is clearly pining for a simpler world where lads were overgrown teenagers, swilling lager and driven by basic lust but too pathetic to do much about it. Indeed, it was that pathos that meant  the original Gary and Tony could never quite be the alpha lads as peddled by the likes of Loaded magazine, and were far more empathetic because of it. 

The same is true here; they remain rather inadequate man-children coasting through life, although their relative harmlessness is a problem when there’s a full-length play needing some impetus.  And surprisingly, the female characters seem to have been given even less agency now than they had in the original sitcom.

Nye recycles some plots from his original scripts – most notably a gruesome scene when Tony treats his own toothache = –  and incorporates a few old gags (‘Quickie? It’s pronounced quiche’ being the most obvious).  There are a few knowing nods to the quartet’s situation being ‘like a play’ and at least three references to  Morrissey’s post-sitcom career as the voice of Bob The Builder, when surely one would have sufficed.

But the farce isn’t frantic enough, the characters too relaxed, and the gags too few and far between for this to really shine. Though Neil Jennings as pub landlord Ken and Valerie Antwi as his girlfriend Eve give us a spirited bit of Butlin’s 1990s Weekender type entertainment in the interval.

• Men Behaving Badly is on at the Barn Theatre, Cirencester, until March 7

Review date: 4 Feb 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Cirencester Barn Theatre