On the Ceiling

This show has now closed, click here for a listing of current and future London shows

Comedy Opened 12 September 2005, Closed 1 October 2005

Garrick Theatre Charing Cross Road, London

On The Ceiling is a new comedy by Nigel Planer, from an idea by Joshua Richards and Alan Osborne, about the blockbuster project of the Renaissance world... The Sistine Chapel ceiling... 1508.

This time the Pope has surely backed a loser, the man he has put in charge of painting The Sistine Chapel is simply not up to the job - afterall, he's a sculptor with next to no experience of painting. The also guy didn't want the job in the first place and has never done anything remotely on this scale before. He's all over the place... when he remembers to turn up for work!

So, who has to cover for him? Who has to put in the hours, teach him his craft, patch up his mistakes, deal with his tantrums and get the job done? Who? Like any big project, it's the little guys, the professionals, the men who've been doing this kind of thing all their lives - they're the ones that are actually going to have to make it happen.

Ron Cook and Ralf Little play the little guys in this new comedy that lifts the lid on the extraordinary story of the men, disregarded by history, who worked on history's most highly regarded ceiling... Please Note: This play contains strong language and therefore has an age recommendation of 16 and over.

"Nigel Planer's play On the Ceiling at the Garrick would make a funny TV sketch of no more than three minutes but it should never have been allowed near a theatre... Marvellous Ron Cooke and adorable Ralph Little dressed in hessian tunics and tights arrive on the high wooden scaffold for work, set to their task and all the while they gossip and bitch about the boss who they mimic as a mincing fusspot who would rather he sculpting. Ron Cooke is as good as he always is and you wonder what in the world made him take the part, and Ralph Little has such a nice face it is hard to criticise but I suggest he sticks to TV." The Sunday Telegraph

"Nigel Planer's first play begins as a tedious joke and ends as a sentimental cliche. Imagine Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead with Stoppard's ideas, originality and wit... To the actors, my commiseration. God, what a pointless play." The Sunday Times

"Much of the action of Nigel Planer's new play, which transfers after a hit run at the Birmingham Rep, takes place in the scaffolding above the chapel, as Lapo and Ludo bitch and reminisce, waiting for a temperamental Michelangelo to turn up... Planer has done sterling research - and the art-historical content is fascinating - but this is stand-up masquerading as a play of ideas." The Observer

"Nigel Planer's first play also comes over as an inflated sketch... The evening is actually most interesting as a lesson in fresco techniques. Ralf Little is disappointingly lame as the dim apprentice, Loti. Ron Cook, as the frustrated wannabe Lapo, has determined charisma and a nice line in clowning. He's the best thing by a long chalk in a rickety play." The Independent on Sunday

Nigel Planer writes about On The Ceiling: Although, by dramatic necessity, a small amount of licence has been taken, almost all of the events, people and working practices in this play are based in fact. The two characters in this play, Lapo (Lapo d'Antonio) and Loti (Lodovico del Buono) did exist, and were among the many people sacked by Michelangelo during his long career. When, after four years' work, the scaffolding was finally removed to reveal the magnificent ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, it was a major event - a must see - rather like the release of the latest blockbuster movie is nowadays. And, like a big movie today, the frescoed ceiling was the product of a large group of people working together - scaffolders, builders, roughcoat plasterers, plasterers, designers, colourists, pigment mixers. It established Michelangelo, until then known only as a sculptor, as a radical and innovative painter, the inventor of 'an entirely new way of painting'. Completely discarding the original brief for what images should appear on the ceiling the usual saints and popes and New Testament figures wrapped in lavish robes - he conceived a plan to create the most ambitious fresco ever made, with 150 painted architectural panels containing over 300 figures. His subject matter was to be the Old Testament and would include pagan sybils and, eventually, several personified flying images of God. This was one of the most radical designs ever made. Like many building projects today, there was a year's pause in the work on the ceiling, in which Michelangelo chased around Italy after Pope julius trying to get paid for the work done so far. It was on resuming the work after this pause that he changed his style, doing away not only with almost all his staff, but also many of the traditional techniques of fresco, finishing the last part of the ceiling at breath-taking speed. It was during this final period that he created the most famous images from the ceiling, such as God breathing life into Adam.