***
Thespians is Mischief’s first musical, and the company that gave us The Play That Goes Wrong turns up with a following already in place. A good part of the New Theatre had plainly come on the strength of that name, and of writers Jonathan Sayer and Ed Zanders, ready to laugh before the lights went down. That kind of loyalty counts for a lot in a comedy. The crowd was on side from the start. Even the pre-show music was in on the act: well-known numbers piped out sung in Greek, a couple of them from Grease. It was a nice touch, and fair warning of the evening to come.
The show is set in 534 BC, when Thespis accidentally invents acting and stages the world’s first play. What follows leans heavily on visual humour: the pratfall, the double-take, the prop that misbehaves at the worst possible moment. It rarely trusts a joke to a line of dialogue when it can hand it to a wobbling set of armour instead. Most of the time that works. The gags are well drilled, the timing is sure, and the laughter came easily. Mischief made their name on shows that fall apart on purpose, and that instinct runs right through this one, songs and all. None of the numbers stayed with me afterwards, but in an entertainment this fast-moving and good-natured that hardly mattered.
James Spence and Claire-Marie Hall
Then the puns. They are dreadful, every one, and meant to be. I won’t spoil them, but a fair few earned huge, heartfelt groans, and room was even found for the venerable Greek urn (geddit?). There is a lot of the Asterix the Gaul approach to using gods names relabelled so that each one lands on some unsuspecting English word. A good number of the jokes reach back into the classics or sideways into pop culture, and I am not sure all of them landed with the whole house. A few drew knowing chuckles from a scattering of seats, and one suspects they were there as much for the writers as for the back row.
The company is a strong one. James Spence makes a warm, hapless Thespis, holding the chaos together without ever quite controlling it. Rhys Taylor is a fine villain as the thin-skinned Tyrant, Pestilostratos, somewhere between Ursula and the Queen of Hearts and enjoying every minute of it. Claire-Marie Hall is bright and clean as Poly, Luke Latchman gives Atlas a likeable, lovable cuteness, Allie Dart leads the Rhapsodes, and Matt Cavendish as the Bard and Mia Jerome as Melampus round out the principals.
The funniest of the lot, by some distance, was Adonis, played by Marc Pickering. He gets funnier and funnier with masses of physical theatre. I would go as far as to say the show would not have worked without him.
At the heart of it, is a love story, and a gay one, handled with a lightness I found refreshing. It does not make a meal of itself or ask for applause. It simply gets on with being a modern romance, and in ancient Greece of all settings that feels far less out of place than it might in a contemporary one. Nothing is played for shock. It was the most quietly modern thing in a show that otherwise revels in the old and the silly, and it gave the evening some unexpected warmth. It is a small thing, done without fuss, and the better for it.
Marc Pickering
Not everything went to plan. A technical fault stopped proceedings for a while and forced a delay, the sort of thing that can kill a comedy stone dead if the room turns. This room did not. Good humour held, and when things picked up again the audience seemed, if anything, more firmly on side for having sat it out together. There was an irony in it, mind. For a company best known for The Play That Goes Wrong, here was a play actually going wrong, this time by accident rather than design. A quick-witted producer might have seized on that and slipped a pun into the announcement as the safety curtain rose again. It helped that the auditorium was blessedly cool.
On one of the hottest nights of the year, with the city still baking outside, that counted for a great deal, and a comfortable audience is a generous one.
Rhys Taylor
None of this is great art, and it does not pretend to be. It is a good, daft night out, played with affection and taken in the same spirit. For all the togas, it could easily have been a festive panto: throw in a few dancing children and you would be there. I left groaning at the puns and still grinning at Adonis.
Until June 27
https://trafalgartickets.com/new-theatre-cardiff/en-GB/event/musical/thespians-tickets
Images Mark Senior
