Groan Ups
Vaudeville Theatre, London Until December 1, 2hrs 40mins
The Play That Goes Wrong and The Comedy About A Bank Robbery occupy two West End theatres. Now there’s this latest play, with two more planned at this address.
These ‘Goes Wrong’ shows have done a roaring trade. Partly because you can enjoy a self-imploding stage disaster even if you don’t speak English. But they are also good value: The Comedy About A Bank Robbery has the cheapest seat of any West End play – at £11.25.
That’s less than a programme and a drink.
We meet the nerdy Simon (Jonathan Sayer), swottish Katie (Charlie Russell), uptight Archie (Henry Shields) and Moon (Nancy Zamit), whose rich parents are making her slum it
However, this latest offering, set in a school, I found a pretty mirthless addition to Mischief Theatre’s empire of shows. The trouble is that nothing much goes wrong.
The action instead follows five kids at a school from the ages of six, 14 and 30, with the final scene set at a school reunion. It’s got a pretty laugh-less first half and never quite recovers, despite rallying a bit as the kids (played knowingly by adult actors) return for the grown-up get-together.
We meet the nerdy Simon, swottish Katie, uptight Archie, buffoonish Spencer and Moon, whose rich parents are making her slum it at this bog-standard comp.
These young kids’ references to their parents’ sex lives in a classroom session is excruciatingly fake-naive. Add poo jokes and a lot of shrieking and you get the picture (Russel, above)
These young kids’ references to their parents’ sex lives in a classroom session is excruciatingly fake-naive. Add poo jokes and a lot of shrieking and you get the picture, as the kids head for their teen years.
In the second half the script unfurls into a more trad drama about the pains of adulthood. Nerdy Simon is now an insufferable urinal cake salesman; Spencer is a fat loser who works in a pet shop; Moon is irredeemably shallow; Katie is unhappily married to Archie.
The show doesn’t entirely abandon slapstick. It destroys several nylon-furred classroom hamsters, mostly though accidental crushing.
The two female leads – Charlie Russell (Katie) and Nancy Zamit (Moon) – haven’t had a hand in the writing, which is by the three male actors: Henry Lewis (Spencer), Jonathan Sayer (Simon) and Henry Shields (Archie).
It ends up as an unfunny Ayckbourn-like play on the formative power of our school days.
The material is a crumpled mess, which director Kirsty Patrick Ward can’t iron out. It feels like a detention. Groan indeed.
‘Master Harold’… And The Boys
Lyttelton stage, National Theatre, London
Until December 17, 1hr 40mins
Rating: 
Strictly Come Dancing fans will love the moves in this play, set in a tea room in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, in 1950. There are no customers, just two black waiters — in white tunics and bow ties.
You’re The Cream In My Coffee is on the jukebox. Willie (Hammed Animashaun) rehearses his quickstep for the finals of the ballroom dance competition. Sam, who’s older, teases him.
The pair chat fondly with the white owner’s schoolboy son Hally (Anson Boon). The play feels genteel and slightly aimless. But when the teenage Hally does something unforgivably cruel to Sam, what a moment it is.
Willie (Hammed Animashaun) rehearses his quickstep for the finals of the ballroom dance competition. He chats fondly with the owner’s schoolboy son Hally (Anson Boon)
Suddenly the brutal reality of apartheid is sucked into the spotless premises. Athol Fugard (now 87) wrote this play in 1982 and it has lost none of its power to shock.
Watch out for one of the best performances of the year from Lucian Msamati as the humane, dignified Sam, who tries to save the white lad from himself.
It’s at times a wordy play but it’s also a great one — and Roy Alexander Weise directs it with an unfaltering step.
What’s In A Name? Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford
Touring until November 23, 1hr 50mins
Rating: 
Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière’s well-made comedy has been a Europe-wide hit since premiering in France in 2010: at one point there were 30 productions in Germany alone.
This is the second outing for Jeremy Sams’s British version, moving the action from petit-bourgeois Paris to gentrifying Peckham.
Elizabeth and Peter are a middle-class couple hosting a dinner party for her brother, Vincent, and his pregnant wife Anna, plus old friend Carl. The wealthy Vincent – arrogant, flashy, a touch vulgar – loves to needle the professorial Leftie academic Peter.
Elizabeth (Laura Patch) and Peter are a middle-class couple hosting a dinner party for her brother, Vincent, and his wife Anna (Summer Strallen), plus old friend Carl (Alex Gaumond)
The Inbetweeners’ Joe Thomas plays pleasingly against type as a slick and smirking Vincent, while Bo Poraj is a convincingly pompous Peter. Laura Patch, as Elizabeth, nails a certain middle-class hospitality, even if she’s a bit underpowered when things go awry.
Vincent announces that he intends to call the baby a shocking name; the irony is that the outraged Peter lumbered his own little darlings with Gooseberry and Apollinaire. Cue a toxic battle of wills – or a mere willy-waving contest, as Elizabeth puts it.
But as the evening goes on, nastier accusations and revelations fly. Not all of these feel quite earned, but there are bombshells that detonate with a satisfying boom, and the play keeps the audience nicely on their toes.
Holly Williams