Micky Jo (0:00)

If you go and see the Comedy about Spies at the Noel Coward Theatre in London, you can expect to leave feeling just like the perfectly served vodka martini full of olives. No, that seems wrong. Oh my God. Hey, welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to you if you are listening on podcast platforms. My name is Micky Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre. I am also a spy. No, I'm joking. I'm also a professional theatre critic here on social media as well as a content creator. And today I'm going to be letting you know exactly what I thought of the brand new show from Mischief Theatre, the comedy about spies. Mischief, who started out as this plucky little theatrical comedy troupe years ago and have gone on to become this hugely successful theater company with their productions happening around the world. They are of course famous for creating the play that Goes Wrong and on the back of that success, similar shows like Peter Pan Goes Wrong, Magic Goes Wrong, as well as the comedy about a bank robbery, and now the Comedy About Spies with several others that I haven't mentioned. They've of course also had huge success on television with the Goes Wrong show, but it's perhaps the play that Goes Wrong for which they are still the most known. The show continues to go strong both in the West End and Off Broadway and they've become really beloved, particularly within the London theatre scene. So whenever they bring a brand new show to the stage, it's an incredibly exciting time and I was very lucky to be able to attend the gala performance at the Knoll Coward Theatre earlier this week. And so, in today's full review, I'm going to let you know what to expect and what I thought of this brand new show, but I'd also love to hear what you thought about it if you've had the chance to see it already. Let us all know your thoughts and feelings in the comments section down below. And while you're there, because I'm very curious and honestly nosy, feel free to share which has been your favorite mischief show so far. I'm fairly partial to the comedy about a bank robbery. Now if you enjoy listening to this review, make sure that you're subscribed to my theatre themed YouTube channel with the notifications turned on so you don't miss any of my upcoming theatre reviews or other theatre videos or following me on social media or podcast platforms. In the meantime, here are my thoughts on the comedy about Spies. So as is fairly evident from the title, this is more akin to the comedy about a bank robbery rather than The Goes Wrong shows, like the Play that Goes Wrong, Peter pan goes wrong, etc. The key difference here being they are not playing their Cornley operatic society characters. Henry Shields, as pictured here, is not playing Chris Bean playing another character or being the director as he so often is. Instead, it's a completely separate narrative. It's not that they are putting on a spy show, they are just in the real world putting on a spy show. And this show features many of the original mischief makers. It has been written by the two Henrys, that is Henry Lewis and Henry Shields, and it still very much has that quintessential mischief flavour. Even if it's not one of like the Goes Wrong collection, it still feels unmistakably like them. Which is to say, if you haven't seen a mischief show before, a gut busting combination of hysterical silly wordplay and deceptively clever silliness at that. But also this audacious physical comedy with some stunts involved, lots of broad over the top acting and characterization and a quintessential Britishness that runs throughout. And it's clear to us from the off that we're leaning into the James Bond of it all here. And we're going to make reference to that. We can tell that from the opening lighting effects and some of the clever spoofing music that is used. We have this introductory scene which gets a little bit explosive and is this extended gag around all of these different agents having code names with a single letter. They did the same sketch on the Royal Variety Program. If you saw that performance, that's what opens the show. Essentially. You have like agent you getting confused when another agent calls somebody else you because they are addressing them. And all the kind of single letter comedy that you can find here. The Two Ronnies did a sketch not dissimilar to this years back, where they were kind of mining the capacity of the English language and these letters to create as many entire sentences as possible. And this manages to go just as far. But after this introduction, we spend almost the entirety of the show in the Piccadilly Hotel in London, where secret agents from Russia, from the US and from MI6 are convening in order intercept a handoff and save the world in the midst of the Cold War. We're set in the 60s here, which makes sense for a stereotypical spy story where the mischief of it all begins to creep in is combining these already kind of ridiculous and slightly silly spy Personas. Like the American agent is joined by his mother, who used to be a spy herself and wants to help him do a good job because he's been struggling on recent assignments. And one of the Russian agents is getting way too into his backstory and is trying to forge a friendship with the other one, but she a lot more like stereotypically angsty and cold. The real genius, I think, is juxtaposing these characters with a handful of civilians who get mixed up in all of their espionage because of mistaken identities that we can hilariously see coming from a mile off. And they're just trying to go about their business. You have a couple trying to propose. You have this anxious hotel desk manager who is aware of the fact that a secret shopper has been sent to the hotel to give them an anonymous review. You've also got an actor played of course by Henry Lew, who is best known for his work in hemorrhoid commercials, who is meeting with the producers of an upcoming film adaptation of the Ian Fleming James Bond stories, hoping to get the role over a Scottish actor named Shaun. And this sets us up for so much ingenious comedy. Not only do you have the confusion of him rehearsing this James Bond esque dialogue and thinking that he's having a private meeting that's like sort of secretive, but you also have trying to set up the proposal and all of these different, very British secrets, like a secret shopper, like an audition, like a proposal coming into contact with actual real world espionage and threat. And if I hadn't said it already, I really enjoyed this show. You know, I think any mischief show is always going to be a great night at the theater. You are always going to be laughing. This feels very much like a fuller return to form than some of their more recent offerings. I saw Good Luck Studio. I didn't get a chance to see Grown Ups, but even in Magic Goes Wrong, they were starting to nudge just in a slightly darker direction. And I think there are forces within Mischief would love to explore these slightly darker ideas within comedy, which is not necessarily in perfect alignment with their brand. So I think that's a little bit tricky. But one thing that this show definitely is, is familiar of their other stuff. If you love mischief shows, you're going to love this very much. This is a guaranteed treat for you at the theater. Is that a little bit to its detriment? That's something that we can talk about as well, though. I had a great time and laughed a lot. Here are some of the ways in which this might have been the littlest bit disappoint. Disappointing. Before we circle back and talk about the triumphs of it. So inherently, I think to make their next show about spies is a smart choice. You get a lot of comedy out of the mistaken identity of it all, out of these buffoonish characters. It's also a world where we know the tropes and we know what the spoof of this is going to look like. And we all recognize a certain image and the James Bond of it all. I actually think, you know, they could have leaned even more into the James Bond world. Like, at a certain point, if you're parodying James Bald, it's going to turn into Austin Powers. And we don't necessarily have to do, like, the seduction and the girls with the overly sexual names, but the fact we never had these extravagant super villains with these crazed, contrived secret hideouts and, like, a couple of concealed weapons, like, there's an umbrella that shoots neutralizing darts. But otherwise, with us spending all of our time running around a hotel, A, it didn't feel too far flung from the world of comedy about a bank robbery. You know, just started to feel like a heist. Been in a different. But B, it could almost have been like hotel guests gone wrong. Like, that was kind of the story that we ended up telling because we were so focused on that setting and that environment. And there was so much comedy around the changing of hotel rooms and the radios and the laundry room and the different features of this hotel and the elevator shaft and all of this stuff. Spies kind of gives them the license to go anywhere. And I really enjoyed that world of the MI6 and that meeting at the beginning behind Claire closed doors. And it's a shame that we didn't get to see that again. Similarly, in terms of, like, the slightest lack of ambition here, Henry Lewis does a fantastic job with this particular character. But it's a shame not to see him getting to play anything other than, once again, a struggling actor whose ego far outweighs his actual success. It's like we're doing a show where everyone is playing these spy or spy adjacent characters. And Henry Lewis is going to be a loud actor again. And he's great at it. He's so, so funny. And he's a standout. He's still a standout in this show. He always is. I just love to find different roles for him to play. Now, I mentioned to you a sequence that takes place in the hotel lift. I called it an elevator shaft. I apologize. How American of me. I'm actually a double agent. And this is one of many moments of impressive physical comedy in comparison with some of the others, this feels just a little bit clumsier. And I also felt as though the opening gag of the second act that sees one character being sent backwards and forwards between different rooms was perhaps a little bit overlong. And if it wasn't some of the increasing visual entertainments of the journey between the two rooms on a travelator, then this would have got very old, very quick. In general, the pacing wasn't necessarily quite up to what it normally is in a Mischief show. We kind of started in the same place, but we never got to that total cacophony of chaos and roaring laughter. We had some big laughs and like consistent big laughs. There are no prolonged uncomfortable silences here. We just never got to those like stacking like crazy laughs coming when you're already laughing. And it gets to that completely euphoric, joyous place. Or at least not at the performance that I attended. And I just don't think it's fast enough or that there's quite enough stacking. There are a lot of moments when they stack a lot of gags brilliantly and they call back to stuff as physical and visual stuff is happening. I just wanted even more. And you know, Mischief are experts at this. They've been doing this for a really long time now, and I'd love to see a show where they push themselves even further. I think some of the things that they're doing with set design are really exciting and in many ways that feels like how this show is a little more ambitious than some of the their previous ones. Like it's a little more produced and yet there were also a lot of very long and conspicuously quiet scene transitions happening between moments, which is not a good friend of comedy. And while we're on the subject of set design, while I am aware that they did not build the Noel Coward Theatre and they are not responsible for its sight lines, you are responsible for the way that you stage a production within that theater and the fact that we have to have television screens positioned at different points throughout the theater in order to show essential pieces of plot and comedy. I mean, y. That they have the facility to do that and that they are doing that for people in restricted view seats. But boo. That they have to in the first place because it's not the same experience when you have to turn from the stage that's slightly restricted and go and watch the bit that you're missing on a screen, it's. It's not going to be as funny. You're going to feel disconnected from it. So if you are planning to go and see this show and I encourage you to do so because in spite of everything that I've just said, I do still think that it's a brilliant and funny show. I just hold mischief to an incredibly high stand with these things because they're so fantastic. Then I would encourage you to get seats that are central or far forwards enough that this isn't going to be a problem. There's a handful of websites like theatremonkey or seatplan.com that you can check in order to find out what your view is going to be like. In the meantime, with an awareness of spoiler alerts, let's head into the next section where I would love to tell you about some really specific jokes that just killed me. So spoiler alert once again as I tell you about some of these jokes and some of these punchlines. But it wouldn't be a Mickey Joe theater review if we weren't getting into the specifics. One of my favorite things that they do with the writing is they spoof a lot of stuff within the spy world and then we have a lot of completely unexpected sort of off topic jokes that emerge alongside that and are funny but also even funnier for being surprising. Henry Shields plays a slightly hapless Baker character who gets roped into the world of espionage unwillingly, and when meeting with two Russian spies who are pretending to work for the hotel, they say to him, ah, I'm in hospitality. The other says, I'm in cuisine, and he replies by saying, I'm in bread. And it's hilarious. It's weird. Of the biggest laughs of the show. There's also a great example of the really formulaic way that comedy can work sometimes. The introductory scene with all of the different agents with the different letter names is so brilliant. And the hilarious bullet point on that is some of the again, the unexpected and physical moments. Like when someone just throws a briefcase into the room and they say, who is that? And he says, the case officer. Or when one of the agents is told to raise the alarm and he grabs the alarm on the wall and just pushes it slightly further up. That's hysterical. That's the best part. It's the little cherry atop a comedy trifle. Do you put cherries on trifles? Not the time, not important. There's other great writing. Henry Lewis has a brilliant line when he's talking about his illustrious acting CV and he says, I played King Lear at the National Theatre bookshop when his character first notices the two American guests at the hotel who are CIA agents He first assumes that they are the film producers and so he tries to, like, give them coded messages about the meeting that they're going to have later. And they misinterpret this either as him being a secret agent or the conclusion they eventually come to is that he's just a weird guy who's trying to have a threesome with them. And the way that what he is saying to them later on about the audition can be misinterpreted and all of these sexual innuendos and double meanings arise from it. Genuinely the best written joke in the show. I was crying with laughter. The only other thing I may have laughed more at, and this I thought was really clever, was there's a moment before. So when it's Henry Shields character is getting sent backwards and forwards between the two different rooms and he's getting turned into a double agent and a triple agent and a quadruple agent because they keep turning him to their side. Every time he goes back between the Russians and the Americans, he passes by the laundry where Henry Lewis's character is just struggling to try and wash his jacket. He ends up inexplicably in the washing machine, getting spun round and round and round and round and round in different positions. It's hilarious to see. But later on, when he meets with the Russians and they believe that he is a secret Russian asset, and he says to them, I'm still giddy from the revolution. That's my favourite. That's my absolute favorite line. It's so good. And it gets a sort of a delayed laugh because you see their reaction. And then there's this wave of gradual recognition throughout the theater about the implications of what he's said before. They reply like, aren't we all? I do also. I know I said that that scene was too long at the top of the second act. It is a funny scene and it is like a quintessential mischief interpretation of spies, because it's essentially like espionage gone wrong. And it's straight out of Friends as well, because they have all of this dialogue where they're like, they don't know that we know that they know that we know that they know that we know that he's on our side. Like. Like, if you've seen that scene from Friends, you know exactly where this is all coming from. I mentioned earlier some of the stacking comedy that they do with things being funny later and calling back to earlier jokes. There's one thing that happens with a bottle of Shiraz where they think they overhear. In fact, it's dialogue from the James Bond audition that a bottle of Shiraz has been turned. Turned into a bomb or some such. And so every time they then see a bottle of Shiraz, they say, shiraz, grab it and throw it out of the nearest window. And there's a moment where a giant prop bottle of Shiraz falls down from atop a rooftop bar. Very funny. Greg Tannehill, as the very eager to help hotel staff member, has a couple of, like, beautifully nonsensical jokes. There's a moment where he's trying to innocuously pass the engagement ring to Henry Shield's character, and it's concealed within one spa brochure. But that's the one that his girlfriend tries to take. And so he says, no, you mustn't take that one. And then trying to come up with some kind of a justifiable excuse as to why his explanation is that brochure is haunted. And then later on, when Henry asks him if he's seen Rosemary, his girlfriend, he says something like, the woman or the herb? And after he qualifies the woman and he says, no, I haven't seen her, Henry, of course, has to ask him, have you seen the herb? And he just stares off beautifully into the middle distance and sees, says, no. It's so good. It's so ridiculous. And that is what I love. I love really stupid comedy like that. That is deceptively clever in its writing or sometimes just stupid in its writing. And that's funny, too. Finally, I'm a stickler for rules in the world that you're establishing on stage, but I also love when they are broken or subverted in the name of humor. And there's a moment early on, we're in the lobby of the hotel and Dave Hearn's character, who is this American CIA agent, is on the phone to his mother. She's off at the side of the stage, and we assume because of theatrical convention that she is elsewhere. He can't hear her or perceive her, but the phone call ends and she's actually just standing there in the corner of the lobby, entirely within sight and earshot. That's funny. Carrying on. Then, let's talk about the creatives and company members who helped to bring this hilarious show to the stage. Now, the show has been very wittily Directed by Matt DeCarlo on a set designed by David Farley. We spend much of the first act in this split level set with four different sections representing four different hotel rooms, and their occupants, of course, are spies and civilians. With the comedy around them, moving between each other's rooms, starting fairly straightforward and becoming increasingly elaborate. They also use a travelator at the start of the second act to create the effect of walking down a hotel corridor and passing by these different doorways and these different guests in these different room rooms. It probably is the most exciting mischief set that I've seen so far in any of their shows. I also think the tone of the Whole Thing, in terms of the direction is really perfectly pitched. The comedy is very consistent, and even throughout it's silly, but not stupid. It's slapstick, but never messy. And there are some really exceptional moments. The guiding comedic force of which I think for the Whole Thing, is juxtaposing these very ordinary British characters with the world of spies and secret agents and espionage that they are are ill equipped to deal with. And so to that end, at the climax of the Thing, you have this contrast on stage, where one half the stage sees various secret agents in combat with each other, doing some great fight choreography. And then on the other side of the stage, you have two characters clumsily and awkwardly trying to fight each other on a rooftop, but it's significantly less thrilling, and that's hilarious. There's no one specifically credited as working on illusions here. There's one very clever and slick moment towards the beginning where something happens. And there are other moments throughout where it's clear what's happened, but they're still directed very seamlessly. Like, it's clear at one point that a dummy is being used for a more gymnastic sequence, but the way that it concludes is still funny enough to get a huge round of applause. That moment is sold as well by Dave Hearn, who has brilliant physicality throughout this show and also plays a very earnest character. If you've seen Police Cops, it's very familiar of the kind of characterizations that they usually have. And also some of the characters that I've seen Dave play before in, like, Mischief Movie Night improvised shows, he's this sort of Mission Impossible born Identity esque, like, very driven, tough, American CIA agent. But then his mum shows up and kind of undercuts his seriousness and things aren't really going his way. His mum is played by the hilarious Nancy Zamit. It's almost like a broad musical theatre character part, which is something I would still like to see her do. FYI, she's so good at characterization that I think that's what really sells this. And then on the other end of that spectrum, but working equally well, you have Charlie Russell playing one of the two Russian agents. And Charlie is so good at these dreadfully over the top, just like far too much characterizations. And I think because we are depicting Russian and American spies here, the fact that you can make them all equally endearing and funny and we're not necessarily rooting for one over the other because they're all kind of fools together, I think is a smart choice for the show. But that's also because of her characterization as well as that of Chris Leesk alongside her. Chris was maybe my MVP in this cast. I thought he was so, so funny every time he was talking about his Russian spy character's backstory and every time he felt the need to talk about it unprompted when engaging with hotel guests. And he was a spleen doctor, which is such a great choice because just the way that he said spleen every time or reacted to someone else saying spleen, it was hilarious. He also has, and this is a teensy bit of a spoiler alert, but not really so much a couple of moments, moments when he fights with himself, which is an impressive feat to watch. He succeeds in what is basically heartwarming buffoonery, as does Greg Tannehill. Greg Tannehill, who is always funniest with a huge, just foolish smile across his face and just, you know, taking everything he hears at face value. He's so great at these unfailingly helpful characters who will try and fulfill still a task that has been asked of them even if it becomes wildly inconvenient. It's one of the funniest things I've seen on stage is him doing this in various different shows. Now of course, all of the performers I've mentioned so far are long standing members of Mischief Theatre, but they have been joined for this production by Adele James, who from what I can tell, is doing her first ever Mischief show and bringing a slight degree more seriousness to her character for necessary reasons. And she plays the girlfriend of Henry Shields character. He's this quintessentially British man who gets caught up in all of this. It's a sort of an insert for us as the audience, but it's also a very mischief route into the show. Alongside him, the other civilian who gets confused for someone more important is the character of Douglas Woodbead played by Henry Lewis. And both Henry's here get to do what they do best. Henry Shields has like this slight tinge of sorrow and hopelessness to his character and you know, Henry Lewis similarly down on his luck but still insisting upon himself and his own self righteousness even while Getting caught up in these elaborate, unfortunate scenarios. And with all of these hysterical performers, it's always going to be a really funny evening at the theatre. They are always going to deliver. We know this from Mischief Movie Night, which are these improvised shows that they do. They can make any concept funny and they do consistently. And this remains a really great time at the theatre. It's not necess boundary pushing. It's familiar of shows that they've done previously. But if that's exactly what you want, that's exactly what you are going to get. This is yet another hilarious mischief comedy show in London with a little bit of spy flavor. And then we can talk a lot about the comedy coming from these hilarious performances and the brilliant writing. It also takes, you know, a remarkable village of people to bring these kind of shows to the stage. The set designers, but also fight director, movement director, stunt consultant John Fiber, who did the sound design and composition, giving us that kind of Bond parody music. There's so much in the lighting, in the props, in the stage management. My goodness, all of the people backstage, all of the crew members working on this show to make sure that it happens slickly. It's very hard to pull something like this off and there's not a lot of room for error in a comedy show like this. And they're doing a fantastic job. Go and check it out at the Noel Coward Theatre if you're looking for one of the funniest shows in town Town. And if you've already done so, I would love to know what you thought. Let me know in the comments section down below whether or not you enjoyed the comedy about spies. In the meantime, thank you so much for listening to this review. I hope that you enjoyed and if you did, make sure to subscribe right here on YouTube. Turn on those notifications so you don't miss my upcoming videos and reviews or go follow me on podcast platforms. I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day for 10 more seconds. I'm Mickey Jo, the oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a Stagey Day. Subscribe.