Tears of Laughter -- Guest Review by Doctor Terror
Inside No.9 Stage/Fright (Wyndham's Theatre and National Tour)
For a long time after COVID, I didn't venture back to the theatre at all. Theatres' choices of what to put on were safe and predictable (The Importance of Being Earnest, Oliver! The Play that Goes Wrong Yet Again) or involved comically overpriced tickets (Moulin Rouge) or both ('Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club'). This was the one that brought me back from the cold.
To say that the pre-show announcement to turn off your phones is worth the ticket price alone is high praise indeed. Sure, there have been some great ones (Hamilton in the UK featured Michael Jibson's George III saying 'Welcome to MY show') but Reece Shearsmith brutally murdering three of his fellow audience members for variously eating loudly, using a noisy laptop and talking, before asking the audience to show a little common courtesy was utterly sublime. Perhaps nothing else in the play topped this, but not for want of trying.
There were echoes of many favourite episodes: Bernie Clifton's Dressing Room with a significant new twist, A Quiet Night In which somehow leads to the kidnap of a new guest celebrity every show (Barry Chuckle, since you ask), a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo for Sardines and scrambling around backstage, filming as you go a la Dead Line. There were palm-drenchingly scary moments and corny showbiz songs. There were twists, there were surprises. For fans of Grand Guignol, there was play-within-a-play Terror in the Asylum which somehow manages to incorporate Reece singing Tom Lehrer's The Elements.
Amid the banality and naked greed of other West End choices, this stood out like a shining beacon of how much can be achieved with an imagination like a runaway train and a sense of humour blacker than a hound of Hell. Enjoy!