Phil Porter: I jumped at the chance to adapt The Lavender Hill Mob

Written by: Phil Porter
Published: Thursday 13th October 2022

Olivier-nominated playwright Phil Porter has adapted The Lavender Hill Mob, the classic Ealing Comedy which starred Alec Guinness, to become a new stage play. Featuring Miles Jupp and Justin Edwards, The Lavender Hill Mob tours the UK until 18th February 2023. Phil talks about taking on the project in this article...

As a theatregoer my tastes have always been pretty eclectic. I have seen and loved all kinds of plays - big, small, angry, whimsical, cerebral, surrealist - and been bored to tears by all kinds of plays as well. But I have always had a sneaking suspicion that the thing theatre does best, or more accurately, the best thing theatre can do, is to make people laugh. I don't think there's any more life-affirming feeling than laughing along with a room full of strangers.

But for playwrights comedy can be terrifying. When we write serious plays, even really bad ones, we can leave the theatre in a shroud of ignorance as to whether we satisfied our audience. But when we write comedies the proof is entirely in the pudding. Did they laugh? How often? How much? And the holy grail: were they ever seemingly incapacitated with laughter?

Even when us writers stay at home we still receive show reports detailing the audience response. After a while we learn to decipher the diplomatic code of the stage manager. 'A quiet but appreciative audience' means we died on our arse.

Nonetheless, when I was asked to adapt The Lavender Hill Mob for the stage I jumped at the chance. Having Tibby Clarke's magnificent Oscar-winning screenplay as my source material would provide me with some seriously sturdy comic foundations upon which to build my script. And as the creative team began to take shape, with Jeremy Sams (whose production of Noises Off had me rolling in the aisles) on board as director, and the always brilliant Miles Jupp cast in the lead, I knew we had the potential to create something special.

Looking again at Charles Crichton's film, I was struck that its ability to provoke laughter is just one of its many great qualities. Of course, it is stuffed with hilarious scenes and characters. But it is also imbued with bucketloads of charm - perhaps even more than any of the other great Ealing comedies. There is something completely disarming, even moving, about its story of an unassuming bank clerk using his own social and professional invisibility to pull off the greatest heist that Britain has ever seen.

And so, while I have tried to find as much laughter as possible, I have tried to avoid doing so at the expense of the story's unique charisma. When I watch and re-watch The Lavender Hill Mob film, I don't just laugh, I also love what I am laughing at. Its humour doesn't feel forced or aggressive. In fact, the screenplay is almost entirely free of jokes per se. Instead, it generates laughter - much like most of the great comic stageplays, from Plautus to Feydeau to Coward to Frayn - through a deft juxtaposition of the outlandish and the entirely believable. I hope this is a good sign in terms of the story's potential to work its singular magic on stage.

I am aware, of course, of the dangers of saying these things out loud. Is there something hubristic in talking, just before we open, about why I think our version of The Lavender Hill Mob might or should be funny? Perhaps the coming months will see us play to a steady stream of 'quiet but appreciative' audiences. But as a diehard believer in the importance of stage comedy, and an avid fan of the original film, I'm delighted to be facing the fear and doing it anyway. As Henry Holland, the plucky bank clerk at the centre of our story is fond of saying: fortune favours the brave!