Shared laughter and shudders in back to school play that goes right
Groan Ups Vaudeville Theatre ★★★★☆
We all need a bit of mischief in our lives, but how much Mischief Theatre do we need in the West End? It’s little more than 10 years since this band of (Lamda) drama school graduates, bound by friendship and a passion for comic improvisation, formed on the fringe. Since then, they’ve become populist comedy’s answer to Andrew Lloyd Webber, taking over venue after venue.
Given the cluster of talent this troupe contains (and attracts), it’s hard to begrudge them their imperial ambition. Their knockabout evening of am-dram catastrophe The Play That
Goes Wrong, born in a pub in 2012, is a fixture at the Duchess (conquering Broadway and beyond too – a global smash). The Comedy About a Bank
Robbery hogs the Criterion, deservedly. And now, never mind their looming BBC series, or tour of Peter
Pan Goes Wrong, these still-youngish scamps have taken up residence at the Vaudeville for a year.
The “Goes Wrong” concept sounds a bit one-trick pony, but they’re happy to continue flogging it: next up is
Magic Goes Wrong, co-created with Penn & Teller. But first off, branching out a little, avoiding genre-spoofing, is
Groan Ups, an original piece co-devised by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields, who also star.
The title smacks a tad of John Godber (remember Teechers?), its farcical elements owe something to Michael Frayn (as TPTGW does, a lot), but I was reminded most of Alan Ayckbourn. The script deftly unites moments broad and silly with elements wistful and serious within a simple structure: we follow the shifting relations and fortunes of five school friends, from early primary days past the terrible teens to an adult reunion.
Yes, the scenario is a bit scribbled on a bus, trades on stereotypes, and gag-wise has its share of groaners. Yet aside from showcasing Mischief ’s rare facility for generating mirth and turning the stage into a zestful playground, it suggests a growing maturity of artistic ambition.
After a (sub) Rowan Atkinson-ish start, teaching staff mock-reprimanding the audience, we get a chaotic assembly presentation by the quintet – with uninhibited behaviour, inadvertent malapropisms and flagrant misunderstandings (adulterous sex is, I kid you not, unwittingly acted out with a mop and bucket). We then join these smelly urchins in the classroom (neatly realised with outsize furniture) to pursue their child’s eye-view, wrestling over Smarties, vying for leadership.
After much ado about poo-jokes, the show grows up, fast: the sweet agonies of puberty are caught in the confused flirtations that beset all five, reflected in the presumption of Nancy Zamit’s posh-girl Moon, the telling reticence of Shields’s clever-clogs Archie, the charming assertion of Charlie Russell’s Katie, and the gruntish oafishness of Lewis’s Spencer, with Sayer giving a show-stealing, high-squealing turn as the bullied no-hoper Simon.
Tragi-comically, their personality-types persist and mellow into ruefulness in the second half, which surprisingly delivers the emotional goods amid a regressive riot of door-slamming and hamster-squashing.
The school-party teens in the circle, where I sat after the interval, were rapt and responsive, torn between shared laughter and a collective shudder at uncomfortable-making truths: high praise indeed.