SPIKE Milligan made a unique and glorious contribution to Britain's comic heritage which inspired generations of comedians who followed him.
Milligan's outrageous and often surreal approach to humour was kick-started to a large degree by his time as a young gunner in World War Two, an era recounted in the seven volumes of his memoirs.
Now Spike's war has been brought to the stage in Adolf Hitler: My Part In His Downfall, showing at the Devonshire Park Theatre this week.
Ben Power and Tim Carroll are to be admired for taking on the challenge of translating the books for theatre, a
nd for achieving an enjoyable and suitably chaotic result.
Milligan, a competent trumpeter, sought refuge from boredom, bull and the horrors of conflict in the company of three fellow musicians who made up D Battery Quartet, providing jazz and, later, comic sketches for concert parties.
The musical thread stitches the play together, with the versatile and energetic cast providing a background of music from the era as Spike makes his way from Bexhill to Algiers and then through Italy before the horrors of battle led him to the psychiatric ward.
The characters and experiences encountered along the way fed his comic imagination and provided a stock of lines which later resonated in Goon Show episodes....Silence when you speak to an officer....Hands up those who haven't been killed yet.
The sketches become more madcap as the evening, and the war, progresses. Milligan would have surely approved of a Hitler in swastika boxer shorts singing Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby.
Sholto Morgan makes a convincing Spike, while Dominic Gerrard, William Findley, David Morley Hale and Matthew Devereaux provide excellent musical and comic support.
Amid the manic antics, the play has a message about the toll war takes on those unsuited to its most extreme demands, but the evening is really about Milligan's comic brilliance.
Spike Milligan's Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall, continues at the Devonshire Park Theatre until tomorrow evening.
Call the box office on 412000 for tickets.
