Inside No. 9 Stage/Fright at Wyndham’s Theatre: part smart reinvention and part lazy cash-in
This dark and often bloody comedy by Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith inspired by their decade-long anthology TV series is a mix of the intelligent and the obvious – part smart reinvention and part lazy cash-in.
There’s an undeniable thrill at seeing the duo –also formerly two-fourths of The League of Gentlemen – in the flesh, riffing like the old-school double-acts they idolise, and channeling their parallel love of horror into IRL jump scares.
But there’s an over-reliance on rehashed TV material, metatheatrical jokes, and pop-culture references that will be baffling to anyone under 50. Oh well, most of the run has sold out already. Ker-ching.
Things look promising at first. The duo initially turn their sharp-eyed nerdery towards the theatre world, blending together stories of Grand Guignol excess and haunted playhouses with clever sideswipes at contemporary shows, from the star casting and cheap thrills of 2:22 a Ghost Story to the video walkabouts that have become commonplace since Sunset Boulevard. “You can’t walk down Shaftesbury Avenue without bumping into some c*** with a camcorder,” grumbles Pemberton.
The best in-joke is the first: the curtain opens on a bank of theatre seats facing us, where Pemberton’s noisy character and two others indulge in breaches of theatrical etiquette that steadily drive Shearsmith’s peevish fellow punter into a murderous fury.
Thereafter, a guttering “ghost light”, used to prevent onstage accidents in dark theatres but also laden with superstitious import, is one of several nice linking devices as four or five stories blur into each other.
The pair’s talent for misdirection and surprise is undimmed, and is put to service for some hair-raising shocks in the second half, a spoof of both Hammer horror and contemporary luvviedom.
But after the prelude, most of the first half is given over to a rehash of a 2018 TV episode about a reuniting 80s comedy duo called Cheese and Crackers, full of references to Bernie Clifton (heyday, 1979), the Krankies (1980-87) and kids’ cartoon Mary Mungo and Midge (1969).
It includes a rejigged sketch about two inept crooks who accidentally kidnap a different B-list star guest each night. The night I saw it, this was Matthew Kelly, who proved himself game for a laugh, but whose primetime heyday, the butt of most of the jokes, was in the 80s and 90s.
I’m not saying everything should be geared to Gen Z and the terminally online, and I personally share many of Pemberton and Shearsmith’s fixations: but it’s odd their tastes are so resolutely retro.
And not only the pop-culture references are old-fashioned: in the second-half horror spoof, involving a pervy surgeon in an insane asylum, Anna Francolini(YES) and Miranda Hennessy(YES) play a gorgon and a dumb blonde straight out of the 70s.
It’s decent fun, directed with knockabout energy and great timing by Simon Evans. Pemberton and Shearsmith are mordantly likeable. The production springs endless witty surprises that critics have been asked not to spoil and dismemberments are staged with gruesome effectiveness by illusionist John Bulleid.
Unlike Fawlty Towers the Play, there’s at least been an attempt to turn a beloved TV show into something new and stage-specific. But underneath there’s a sense that this is yet another safe bet, a smirk-along for the fans, a chance to wring more cash out of an established property - when it could have been so much more.
To Sat 15 April, tickets.delfontmackintosh.co.uk.
