This is the
play that started it all for Mischief Theatre, their original production that
first viewed the public and critics alike nearly five years ago now and it
remains an essential watch if you’ve not seen it. It is a deceptively straight
forward production too, using just one set and I can imagine other people
thinking they might have a go at something similar. Yet this is a masterpiece
of timing and tone. It takes the elements of live theatre and then has them go
wrong enough to amuse us yet not so wrong as to lose the shape of the
production, The cast play it absolutely straight- except in moments where their
character playing a character wants to acknowledge the audience. Cos that’s the really clever bit- we’re
actually watching actors playing poor actors appearing in a play.
The period
murder mystery is perhaps an easy target to spoof but the key thing about Mischief
Theatre- and what keeps it fresh- is that this is not really a spoof at all. It
never pokes fun at the rituals of the genre, in fact the company are supposedly
trying their best to be authentic, but things go wrong. Bits of the set stick,
fall off the wall, come apart. One cast member is rendered incapable so a
stagehand, complete with script in hand has to stand in. Character miss their
cues, their lines go out of sync and in one brilliant routine the same scene
plays out several times because the actors can’t work out the line to move them
on! The physical comedy is delivered with enough accuracy to elicit frequent
gasps from the audience as we gradually realise no part of the set is
necessarily immune to collapse or malfunction.
That there
isn’t a conventional joke in it makes it all the more admirable. The script
never escorts to cheap laughs, everything is energetically earned and as matter
speed increasingly out of control there is a madcap air of unpredictability
even though we should know the form by then. There’s a rigour too about the way
some gags come back an hour or more later and somehow the murder mystery aspect
is played through with a relatively modest sized cast.
Seeing this
production –currently touring the UK- after Mischief Theatre’s two tv specials
you realise too how attuned they are to each medium. There were slightly different
things they could do with cameras that suggest they could take different
formats and work them in subtly different ways. There’s been talk of a tv show-
imagine how they could tackle well known tv series with this format.
The original
cast have now passed this play on to a different group whose performance on
this tour suggests there could be unlimited versions of different shows about
in a few years’ time. In the end it is the excellence of the conceit that
enable multiple casts to successfully inhabit these roles. Their humour does
date back to a simpler time worlds away from the weary sarcasm and one
dimensional spoofing that you see elsewhere. It feels like they’ve tapped into
the classic silent comedy era albeit with words and there’s nobody out there
doing what they do at the moment. This is comedy that can appeal to all ages
and different types of people so if you get a chance to see any Mischief Theatre
show, take it!
Tour trailer (features the original cast):
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