PATRICK MARMION reviews The Comedy About Spies at the Noel Coward Theatre: A head-spinning winner, spy spoof hits comedy gold
Mischief Theatre, the team behind The Play That Goes Wrong, did it again last night with yet another hit for theatreland.
They strike comedy gold in their latest caper: a Sixties spy spoof that is like Johnny English meets Basil Fawlty in a Piccadilly hotel. It's bigger, better and more brilliantly bungling than ever.
Written by and starring Mischief's two Henrys – Lewis and Shields – it left me in awe at how it's possible to devise something so complicated... and actually pull it off on stage.
The idea itself is simple: Russian agents in London are about to get hold of a weapon 'so powerful it could take down the USA'.
But a ruthless CIA agent, aided by his Brooklyn mom, has been tipped off and means to stop them.
What nobody has counted on is Bernard (Henry Shields), a baker from Tadworth, aiming to propose to his uncertain girlfriend Rosemary (Adele James).
Or failing thesp Douglas Woodbead (an orotund Henry Lewis), in town to audition for a new Bond film – despite being best known as the face of haemorrhoid cream on TV.
An undercover French farce running through four bugged bedrooms, a lobby, roof gardens, a lift shaft and a laundromat, it's more complex than prime number theory.
The idea itself is simple: Russian agents in London are about to get hold of a weapon 'so powerful it could take down the USA'
Yet director Matt DiCarlo's at one point literally 'floorless' production is slick as an oil spill on an ice rink.
Chris Leask amuses as Russian spy Sergei; while Dave Hearn, as his US counterpart, lays on abseiling and pratfalls.
But it's the two Henrys who steal the show. Shields, as the baker whose proudest moment was standing up to the KGB (Kent Guild of Breadmakers).
And Lewis, as the constantly defeated yet invincibly resolute actor who identifies Bond in his audition as 'ooh-seven'.
Running at 120 minutes, I started counting to see if it really was a laugh a minute. Actually, it's more like three – making it a 360, all-round, head-spinning winner.
The Comedy About Spies runs at London's Noel Coward Theatre until September 5.
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