Octagon, Bolton
What's it all about, Alfie? As two and a half hours turn to almost three, you start to wonder. David Thacker's revival of Bill Naughton's meandering and episodic account of that 1960s Casanova, Alfie Elkins, is just the latest in line – Michael Caine made his name in the 1966 movie version, and Jude Law has also tried his luck on celluloid with the role. But even in the context of early 1960s sexual politics, the on-stage Alfie – who refers to women as "it" – is hard to love and easy to dismiss as a cocky dodo in a serge suit.
Of course it's obvious that Alfie, despite his endless stream of casual sexual conquests, is the real loser: opportunities for fatherhood and stable relationships pass him by, the consequences of his actions pile up, and mortality and age touch him on the shoulder. So obvious, in fact, that it begins to feel like a morality play, albeit one in which the (anti)hero addresses the audience directly to explain his philosophy of life. That device, and a taut, tight scene with a back-street abortionist hint at what this play might have been, and could perhaps be in a pared-down and edited version.
David Ricardo-Pearce's decision to play Alfie as less the Jack-the-lad charmer, more an Everyman in the grip of a growing existential crisis, is the right one. But for that approach to work, the play would have to be liberated from its naturalistic prison and more strongly pointed as a study of masculinity in crisis. Instead we get lots of furniture lugged around on stage, and a script that, like Alfie, feels like a bit of dinosaur.