I went to today's matinee of The Play That Goes Wrong in Trafalgar Studios. The box office guy that gave me my ticket is the same that gave me my ticket for The Hothouse last Tuesday. Wonder whether he recognised me.
Arrived just as the doors opened, which is good, because the action starts before.. the action starts. If you get my drift. Basically, pay attention to anything and anyone that moves and is not an audience member.
Comedy is tricky. This is hilarious, so someone somewhere knows their comedy, and these people know how to play it. Simply, the story is that an inept theatre company is staging a murder mystery. Unfortunately for them, pretty much everything that can go wrong does. A couple of times, it spills slightly over into silliness, but this is laugh-out-loud, tears-streaming-down-your-face funny. My personal favourite was "Charles", who has a deadpan way about him, but special mention must go to the "stagehand" who finds herself forced to step on at short notice.
Word of warning - a lot of liquid is sprayed around, so beware if you're in the front row!
Booking recommended - I think this performance sold out, and it is a small venue. I see they're booking right through next year, but it wouldn't make sense to move this to a larger venue, you'd miss many of the facial cues.
It's only about 75 mins long, so afterwards I took a stroll down Whitehall to Westminster. You can forget how pretty this city is, and I haven't been here for a while. Passed a few protests - one to save some Sikh professor, who has apparently been wrongfully sentenced to death, one against the BNP, and one to save the badgers.
Then across the bridge to the south bank, left along Bankside, which always has a party atmosphere, and all the way up to the Globe, to my favourite Pizza Express, where I was sat upstairs with a beautiful view of St. Paul's. And was marvellously fed.
So far, the plan for tomorrow is Yellow Face, in the new Park Theatre in Finsbury Park. Watch this space..
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