I always feel rather pompous reviewing
Peepolykus shows, trying to describe, explicate and evaluate their
humour when primarily they’re just being silly. The company scored a
hit last year with a daft three-man version of
The Hound Of The Baskervilles which
even made it into the West End. They now pretend that they are about to
present
The Importance Of Being
Earnest. (Even the programme claims to be for
Earnest, and when they toy at one
point with casting thickly-accented Spanish performer Javier Marzan as
Jack Worthing they pertly reference their own previous show with, “But
maybe a Spanish Sherlock Holmes...!”)
After a few minutes, once a suspicious, armed figure has left the front
row of the audience, the performers tell us that the
Earnest business is a front: they
are in fact going to re-enact a recent shocking chain of events which
entangled actor John Nicholson in an international web of espionage and
social-engineering conspiracy. Wildean motifs keep popping up: when MI5
re-appear they lunge back into
Earnest
as a cover; Nicholson at one point suffers a near-death experience in
which Lady Bracknell tries to entice him to step into the white light;
and the sinister plot itself involves a baby left at Victoria station
in... actually, this time in a rucksack. (“A ruck-saaack?!”)
There is some delightfully ridiculous stuff on offer here. Miranda, a
nurse with a heart of gold, quizzes Nicholson in his Victorian costume,
“Why are you dressed like Colin Firth?” Another character (played by
Richard Katz, a valuable addition to the Peepolykus ranks) gloats, “MI5
will make me rich beyond my wildest dreams,” even though he’s playing a
Russian oligarch and they seem to have pretty damn wild dreams in that
regard. The company even manage to contrive a dippy closing musical
number from David Bowie’s back catalogue.
But then I try once more to explain why they are merely very good
rather than great, and I use phrases like “not
crisp enough”, which makes them
sound like lettuce. They are growing ever closer to the magic zone,
though: the coarse acting of the opening Wilde extract is all energy
rather than precision, but during the spy sequences they commit
themselves to the story, which makes it all the funnier. They have
perhaps realised the vital importance of being earnest.
Written for the Financial
Times.