As the final venture in his tenure as artistic director for the Birmingham Rep, director Sean Foley’s decision to bring eighties cult classic Withail and I to the stage certainly presents something of a time capsule curio. For one, it’s a fairly meticulous transplant of the Richard E Grant and Paul McGann favourite, right down to having the film’s writer-director Bruce Robinson on board and penning the book. Any notion of modernising its tale of two down-on-their-luck aspiring actors bumming about at the tail end of the sixties is bypassed altogether.

For better and worse, this it Withnail – warts, fag ends, trench coats and all.

Withnail (Robert Sheehan) and flatmate, ‘I’/Marwood (Adonis Siddique) are boozing their way through unemployment, their home infested with dog-sized rodents and all manner of horrors growing within their neglected sink. Literally counting down the hours until they can drown their sorrows down the local, the duo seize upon a visit to Withnail’s affluent Uncle ‘Monty’ (Malcolm Sinclair), taking flight to his country cottage, that turns out to be a nightmare all of its own.

“Sheehan is great fun in the role, and wisely abandons any attempt to just mimic Richard E Grant’s iconic performance…”

Gloriously grim, yet laced with edges of quasi-tragedy throughout, the two lead characters remain compelling figures. Withnail’s freewheeling, drunken mania masks a potential wasted (quite literally) on a life of excess and indulgence. Sheehan is great fun in the role, and wisely abandons any attempt to simply mimic Richard E Grant’s iconic performance, yet is no less animated or entertaining as a result. Siddique plays the straighter role of narrator Marwood with timidity and a touch more relatability, and it’s another winning performance.

And from audience response alone, there’s little denying this gloriously grim comedy still has a following. With whoops and hollering for fan favourite moments such as Withnail’s inebriated demand for ‘the finest wines known to humanity’, at times it can all feel akin to a glorified tribute act, venturing into the likes of even Rocky Horror territory with such fervent audience gratification of key lines and moments.

And yet, during its second act in particular, Withnail in 2024 aches and creaks as something of relic of a foregone time in terms of representation and narrative. The ever-dependable Malcolm Sinclair is frequently giggle-worthy stepping into the shoes of the late, great Richard Griffiths as the fussy, salacious Monty, but the depiction of an elderly gay man as a lascivious, predatory figure as a source of comedy feels laden and uncomfortably outdated. Again, with full recognition that this is adapted from an almost forty-year old film, it’s nonetheless difficult to shake the sense that extended set pieces essentially portraying attempted sexual assault as comedic jolt and jar within modern sensibilities.

More successful is the visual language of the show. Alice Power’s interlocking, transportive staging looks great and feels premium, given dimension and production value thanks to some great use of video backdrops in particular. The appearance of another fan favourite in the form of an on-stage Jaguar that the characters cavort about in also received cheers. Some of the transitions between the shorter scenes can feel a trifle sluggish at times, though, which is only exacerbated by some of the internal pacing feeling at times a bit off.

Shorter scenes and quicker cuts or edits in the film lose their immediacy when you have sometimes upwards of twenty seconds of staging transitions to wait through. A brief visit to a phone box midway through, for instance, gets significant on-stage set up yet is over almost as soon as it has begun, and could quite comfortably be repurposed into another scene, or chopped altogether.

There’s plenty to enjoy in Withnail and I, and for some audiences in particular there is patent (indeed, audible) joy in finally seeing its mucky mischief played out on stage. Sheehan, Siddique and Sinclair put in engaging, funny and charismatic performances, whilst Adam Young and Matt Devitt entertain in bit parts.

“…for some audiences in particular there is patent (indeed, audible) joy in finally seeing its mucky mischief played out on stage.”

Foley sets the whole thing to live renditions of Procol Harum and The Kinks hits, amongst others, vividly performed by a live band headed up by Sooz Kempner, which gives it all an extra splash of punk and grime.

And still, by so slavishly recreating the original film, including inheriting some of its more problematic and outdated wrinkles, Foley’s final flourish at the Rep ends up feeling like little more than a colourful replication, a faithful but rather uninspired simulacra, rather than a slice of theatre or storytelling with any sort of perspective or message for today.

Perhaps, much like its lead characters, it’s a case of rather wasted talent and opportunity, after all.