There is, it appears, no limit to the number of things that can “Go Wrong”, theatrically speaking. The Play That Goes Wrong last year celebrated a decade in the West End and Mischief, its creator company founded in 2008 by a group of acting graduates, have now unleashed their particular brand of merry mayhem in a dizzying number of ways.
Mischief’s shows – The Comedy About a Bank Robbery also played in London for four years – and television outings have proved big hits in this country and internationally, and now the team reunites to have fun at the expense of the spy genre.
The myriad tropes and clichés of spy stories are super-ripe for Mischief-making, and writers Henry Lewis and Henry Shields tuck into them with enthusiasm. It is not for nothing that the play’s tagline is “CIA. KGB. LOL.” We’re in 1961 and a rogue MI6 agent is planning to hand some top secret information to the Russians. The Americans are determined to thwart the operation, which leads to an almighty tumble of spies and civilians in a London hotel.
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Oh, and there’s also Douglas Woodbead (excellent understudy Adam Byron on the night I went), a comically grandiose actor there to audition for the new role of James Bond (“It’s down to me and some Scottish chap called Sean”).
Chaos, of course, ensues. Sections of the humour tend to the broad and over-laboured, but this deceptively low-fi set-up requires high-tech levels of energy and skill, as well as precision-drilled choreography of the physical comedy and fight sequences.
David Farley’s set unfolds to reveal four almost identical hotel rooms ranged over two levels, in which quadruple-crossing agents plant bugged radios, abseil through windows and perpetually interrupt unassuming baker Bernard (Shields) as he tries to propose to his high-flying girlfriend Rosemary (Adele James).
Mischief’s shows appeal across the generations in a way that vanishingly few do in our ever more fragmented entertainment landscape (Photo: Mark Senior)It is impossible not to be swept along by the giddily escalating mirth of Matt DiCarlo’s amiable production, as Russian agents Elena and Sergei (Charlie Russell and Chris Leask) must continually contend with the fact that only Elena is any good at the business of keeping their movements covert. Sergei’s principal interest lies in crafting an ever more ludicrously elaborate backstory for his “British” character.
There came “oohs” and “aahs” of real involvement and satisfaction, as well as vocal speculation about the identity of the mole, from the audience, which pleasingly included a number of family groups.
This is the real secret to Mischief’s magic-making: their shows appeal across the generations in a way that vanishingly few do in our ever more fragmented entertainment landscape. It’s no small triumph and I confidently predict that the West End will be full of Mischief for years to come.
To 5 September (spiescomedy.com)
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