Theatre review:Fun at the Beach Romp-Bomp-a-Lomp!!

It's a week of exclamation marks in theatre and I wonder if the creators of the latest musical parody to hit the stage are unaware of musical theatre history, or just deliberately flying in the face of it: Because famously Oliver Exclamation Mark was an enduring hit, but when Lionel Bart followed it up with Twang Exclamation Mark Exclamation Mark that went so badly that, to my knowledge, nobody's ever even been allowed to revive it even as a curiosity. So with Kathy & Stella Solve a Murder Exclamation Mark opening in the West End, are Brandon Lambert (music and lyrics) and Martin Landry (book) setting themselves up to be the catastrophic flipside at Southwark Playhouse with Fun at the Beach Romp-Bomp-a-Lomp Exclamation Mark Exclamation Mark? Well... a bit.

Theatre review: The Comedy About A Bank Robbery

I was apprehensive about whether the latest show from Mischief Theatre, of The PlayThat Goes Wrong and Lights! Camera! Improvise! would live up to their past work; within minutes the opening scene, a prison breakout complicated by cheesy wordplay straight out of a Zucker Bros movie, had proved the company knew what they were doing when they branched out - slightly - from plays going wrong. Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields return as writers and Mark Bell as director of The Comedy About a Bank Robbery, cast almost entirely with familiar faces from their farces and improv shows. The setting is 1950s Minneapolis, and gangster Mitch (Shields) has fled jail and sought out ex-girlfriend Caprice (Charlie Russell.) But he's not after a romantic reunion: Her father Mr Freeboys (Lewis) is the manager of a bank that'll be holding the enormous diamond of a visiting Hungarian prince in its vaults.

Theatre review: The Play That Goes Wrong

I'd been put off by the uninspired title from seeing The Play That Goes Wrong's initial run at the Old Red Lion, but some very enthusiastic recommendations saw me give it a go as it gets a West End stint at Trafalgar 2. Henry Shields, Henry Lewis and Jonathan Sayer's farce sees the chaotic Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society take on cosy murder mystery "The Murder at Haversham Manor" and be defeated by it at every turn. This framing device gets the briefest of introductions from a surly techie (Rob Falconer) whose preoccupation with finding his Duran Duran CDs will later distract him from his work; before we launch straight into the disastrous first night, and the discovery of a dead body (Joshua Elliott) that doesn't look all that dead. Especially when the other actors keep treading on him.