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9 hours ago
13
‘Vodka martini.” “Shaken?” “Yes, but I’ll beryllium fine.” If groanworthy jokes of that calibre interval your boat, The Comedy About Spies, acceptable successful aboriginal 1960s London, volition beryllium plain sailing. Even if they don’t, that needn’t enactment you off: the caller amusement from Mischief, the institution down the smash-hit … Goes Wrong series, besides offers farce, slapstick and aggregate callbacks. So overmuch of the publication relies connected linguistic misunderstandings (sweet/suite, need/knead, etc) that adjacent the astir tolerant spectator whitethorn go homophone-phobic.
The nonsense, orchestrated by manager Matt DiCarlo, kicks disconnected instantly with concealed agents confusingly named aft letters of the alphabet (“Not U – you!”). We past leap to the creation deco lobby of the Piccadilly Hotel wherever MI6, the CIA and the KGB are trying to get their hands connected the mysterious Project Midnight. Among those caught up successful the tangle of mistaken identities are a milquetoast baker and a blustering thespian hoping to beryllium formed successful Dr No arsenic “Ooh-Seven”.
A predisposition to the gag-rate of Airplane! volition boost enjoyment, though The Comedy About Spies is fast-paced capable to marque that movie look positively Beckettian. I was crying helpless tears of laughter wrong the archetypal 5 minutes, and astatine respective different moments throughout, not slightest during a enactment astir a haunted leaflet that would instrumentality a paragraph to explain. The damp-squib gags thin to beryllium eclipsed by the dynamite ones, with a azygous exception: a vulgar moving gag astir a seasoned CIA cause thrilled by the imaginable of a threesome with her ain lad alternatively sours the jolly mood.
David Farley’s doll’s-house-style cross-section set, which splits the edifice into colour-coded quarters successful the archetypal act, is glorious, but his designs turn fussy and over-dressed successful enactment 2 and permission 1 craving the ingenious minimalism of Operation Mincemeat. The extent of emotion successful that likewise silly amusement is besides absent here, making The Comedy About Spies a much mechanical endeavour. Except, that is, for histrion and co-writer Henry Lewis’s poignant last enactment reading, which bestows dignity connected to a quality (the Bond wannabe) who has been a buffoon throughout. This time, determination were tears successful my eyes for a antithetic reason.
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At the Noël Coward theatre, London, until 5 September
English (US) ·