Rikki & Me
★★★☆☆ Sentimental
King’s Theatre: Tue 10 – Sat 14 Oct 2006
Review by Thom Dibdin
Jollity abounds but is not unbounded in Rikki & Me, a new play about the life, laughs and death of the legendary Scottish comedian, Rikki Fulton, loosely based on the biography written by Fulton’s wife, Kate.
The benefit of the approach is that it stops the show descending into a sort of live greatest hits of Fulton’s best bits from Scotch and Wry, Five Past Eight, and The Adventures of Francie and Josie.

Paul Young gives Rikki Fulton a kiss on the cheek in the Perth Theatre Company production of A Wee Touch of Class at the Church Hill Theatre during Edinburgh Festival 1985. Photo © The Scotsman Publications Ltd
The difficulty is that it skims effortlessly past much of his life and, while understandably focussing on Kate and Rikki’s life together, descends into an over-sentimental concentration on his demise under the curse of Alzheimer’s. His birth, treated as a comedy sketch, works well. His death, as Kate says goodbye and he reaches up to kiss her one last time is mired by its apparent realism.
The comedy is, however, very well done thanks to strong performances all round. Tony Roper, who co-wrote the play and worked closely with Fulton on Scotch and Wry, plays the man himself with a compassion and strong eye for detail.
The sonorous tones of the Reverent I M Jolly are particularly well realised. This is Fulton at his very best, with the sort of humour that gets the laughter welling up from right deep down, no matter how hard you try to resist.
uncanny
The show stealer is Gerard Kelly. His version of Jack Milroy with the pair getting stuck into the joys of the Arbroath sketch as Francie and Josie is quite uncanny. Not that Roper and fellow writer Philip Differ have felt the need to remain totally faithful to the original scripts. The odd modern reference adds the topicality which would be lost in treating the lines as museum pieces.
There’s a new sketch for Supercop, too, while Dirty Dickie Dandruff also gets the odd updated gag in his appearance.
This is well worth a visit. Stevie Hannan puts in a stirling job playing many of the people who knew or were affected by Fulton in his life, and Alyson Orr keeps the pace going as Kate Fulton. But it just feels that if it hadn’t got bogged down in the slush of sentimentality it could have been so much better.
Running time: Two hours and 30 minutes (including one interval)
King’s Theatre, 2 Leven Street EH3 9LQ. Phone booking: 0131 529 6000.
Tue 10 – Sat 14 October 2006
Evenings: 7.30pm; Weds & Sat Mats: 2.30pm.
ENDS