Theatre review: It's Headed Straight Towards Us

Closing off what's been a very strong week of theatre for me is a fairly starry premiere for the Park Theatre: Adrian Edmondson and Nigel Planer are the writers of disaster comedy It's Headed Straight Towards Us and I did wonder more than once if this was a project that the writers had been working on for a while, perhaps with the original intention of performing it themselves - I could certainly see Edmondson in the role that's ended up going to Rufus Hound. The setting is the luxury trailer of C-list actor Hugh (Samuel West,) never the most celebrated actor of his generation (no knighthood, only an MBE,) but having made a good living for himself in recent years as the butler to a volcano god in a cheesy but wildly successful action movie franchise. The latest installment is being filmed on the side of an actual Icelandic volcano*.

One of the actors playing a lava monster has gone missing, delaying filming, and when he shows up it's in Hugh's trailer, where he insists on staying - Gary (Hound) is an old drama school classmate and rival of Hugh's.

Any hope that he might get rid of him quickly is dashed when the mild tremors they've been experiencing turn into a full-scale volcanic eruption, and the two actors are trapped on the wrong side of a crevasse with runner Leela (Nenda Neururer.) So this is a classic comic setup of a bickering pair trapped together, but there's a lot of good lines in the script and Rachel Kavanaugh's production is slick.

It's very much a show about acting and actorly pretentions, but although there's a lot of industry jokes they're the kind most people will likely get - Hugh has taken up cobbling as a hobby in the hope that it might make him Daniel Day-Lewis. Gary was the one with the raw talent and a highly successful early career as a hellraising star, but his behaviour ended up getting him blacklisted, and his alcoholism means he still still has alarming memory blackouts - this payday is a favour from a casting director he's known for decades. Meanwhile Hugh is in Alcoholics Anonymous, but mostly because it's great for networking.

West and Hound are in their element as these characters, and Neururer gives solid support as the one attempting to be a steadying influence - although Edmondson and Planer do give Leela a couple of eccentricities of her own (she's meant to be studying to be a volcanologist, but got kicked off the course for asking too many questions about elves) to stop her ending up simply a straight man. Michael Taylor's set features some tectonic movement of its own, although it's weirdly underused after an explosive opening. And I liked the production just relentlessly covering the front row of the stalls in artificial snow. It's Headed Straight Towards Us isn't revolutionary, but it does consistently entertain.

It's Headed Straight Towards Us by Adrian Edmondson and Nigel Planer is booking until the 20th of October at Park Theatre 200.

Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Pamela Raith.

*it's explicitly named as Eyjafjallajökull, which famously erupted in 2010 and is therefore assumed by the production to be "safe" for a while yet