THE COMEDY ABOUT SPIES

Noël Coward Theatre

★★★★

“another all-conquering crowd-pleasing triumph”

There’s a reliable joy to a Mischief Company production – a blend of manic precision, cheerful chaos, and the comforting sense that, whatever happens – or doesn’t – you’re in safe hands.

The writing team of Henry Lewis and Henry Shields has formulated a winning blend of mayhem and mirth that has occupied vast swathes of theatre land, with audiences mobbing the box office for a slice of guaranteed hilarity.

With The Comedy About Spies, Mischief once again delivers what it does best: tightly choreographed anarchy, misunderstandings, impeccable farce and groaning puns, this time with a generous helping of 1960s glamour and Bond pastiche.

Under Matt DiCarlo’s direction, confusion begins from the off with agents given letters as names, “Not U – you” “Oh,” says U. “Yes?” says O. Etc.

This code-naming is done “for ease”.

Four Es appear.

Of course they do.

And that’s in the first five minutes.

Where earlier hits mined mishap from amateur dramatics (The Play That Goes Wrong) and pantomime mayhem (Peter Pan Goes Wrong), Spies takes aim at glamorous Cold War espionage thrillers – Bond, Le Carré, and every trench coat cliché in between. The result is another all-conquering crowd-pleasing triumph at a quick-fire pace with an ensemble cast as well drilled as a North Sea oil field.

It’s London 1961. A rogue British agent has stolen plans for a top-secret weapon, setting CIA and KGB agents on a collision course in the faded grandeur of London’s Piccadilly Hotel. Throw in an aspiring actor who thinks he’s auditioning for Bond, a pair of lovers in a relationship crisis, and more double-crosses than a spoiled ballot, and you’ve got a narrative that delights in the possibilities of confusion.

What sets Mischief apart is not just the slapstick but the ensemble’s uncanny ability to make bedlam look effortless. Every tumble, double take and mistaken identity is underpinned by clinical comic timing. For example, a two-up, two-down doll’s house cross section of hotel rooms is a blizzard of multi-dimensional farce which reaches a point of near-hysteria.

The production zips along, bolstered by David Farley’s gorgeous set designs that nod to ’60s spy kitsch – Soho neon, art deco lobbies and moving stage conveyors that give chases the feel of a Pink Panther title sequence.

The Comedy About Spies shows a company still hungry to explore the possibilities of their niche. The pleasure lies not in whether the mission succeeds but in watching it unravel with unashamed silliness.

“Vodka Martini?”
“Yes.”
“Shaken?”
“Yes, but I’ll be fine.”

Groan.

“Have you seen Rosemary?”
“The woman or the herb?”

It just never stops.

The Comedy About Spies delivers laughs. That is what it is designed to do and exactly what it does. It’s as a simple – and as devilishly complicated – as that.

THE COMEDY ABOUT SPIES

Noël Coward Theatre

Reviewed on 13th May 2025

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by Mark Senior

Previously reviewed at this venue:

DR STRANGELOVE | ★★★½ | October 2024

THE MOTIVE AND THE CUE | ★★★★★ | December 2023

THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE | ★★★★★ | October 2023

THE GREAT BRITISH BAKE OFF MUSICAL | ★★★ | March 2023

THE COMEDY ABOUT SPIES

BIRDSONG

Alexandra Palace Theatre

★★

“The play is a streamlined version of the book, but this production does not bring out the pain and inhumanity of war”

Alexandra Palace Theatre is the final venue for Birdsong, after its long regional UK tour.

Alexandra Palace Theatre is London’s oldest new theatre, originally built in 1875, falling into disrepair and eventually re-opening in 2018 after a major refurbishment bringing the huge auditorium back to life in arrested decay. It is a big theatre to fill and with a lot of the seating on the flat it is lucky the stage is high. The slopping seats are a long way back from the stage in this vast space. But it is beautiful and majestic.

Now to Birdsong… This production marks the thirtieth anniversary of Sebastian Faulks’s epic and searing WWI novel – and fifteen years since the West End premiere of the stage adaptation by Rachel Wagstaff.

After seven months on the road, this current production is tired and needs to be put to sleep. The cast, most playing several characters with several dodgy accents, have been allowed to stretch out their lines and pauses – it needed desperate tightening by the director Alastair Whatley, and at over three hours this production is too long.

The opening scene is in present day Amiens, France, with a young man looking for a WWI soldier’s grave. It then moves to the bourgeois charm of pre-war Amiens where Stephen Wraysford (James Esler) is a guest staying with René Azaire (Sargon Yelda), his wife Isabelle (Charlie Russell) and his teenage daughter Lisette (Gracie Follows) to learn about Azaire’s textile factory. The factory is failing, the workers are rebelling, the Azaire’s marriage is toxic, and Stephen starts a passionate affair with the unhappy Isabelle. The affair is discovered and Act One closes with them running away together.

Act Two opens in the 1916 trenches in France, with hammy acting and singing Hold Your Hand Out Naughty Boy, a music hall favourite, sung by the sappers and infantrymen of the British Army, covered in mud and showing their camaraderie. We meet various characters including Jack Firebrace (Max Bowden) a sapper who digs the dangerous tunnels under the battlefields, and learns of his young son John’s death, in a letter from home. Stephen is now a lonely, cold-hearted lieutenant, who dissects dead rats. In flash backs we discover that Isabelle had left him. Firebrace saves Stephen’s life when one of the tunnels collapses in an explosion. The act ends in silhouette as the soldiers climb up the ladders out of the trenches into No Man’s Land and certain death.

Act Three in the tail end of the war, Stephen and Firebrace are again trapped underground. This time Stephen desperately tries to save Firebrace’s life, but he dies before a German Jewish soldier breaks through – it is the end of the war and peace is above ground. The play bookends back to the present day and we discover that the young man searching for the soldier’s grave has been looking for Jack Firebrace’s grave; and he is in fact John (yes named after Jack’s dead son), Stephen’s grandson.

The set by Richard Kent, works well to create multiple locations including the claustrophobic underground tunnels. The lighting tonight was maybe too dark and there was continuous smoke billowing, which worked for the factory and battle scenes but not for the gentle French countryside and house scenes.

The theatre acoustics are flat, meaning the cast are heavily miked with individual head mikes and the sound is overly loud. The microphones also pick up the fact that the maid’s shoes do not have rubbered soles, and on this stage her noisy clackety clack steps were heard throughout, especially when she exited stage left and ran round backstage to make a quick re-entrance stage right.

There was no chemistry between lovers Isabelle and Stephen, and in their graphic sex scene Stephen is naked, as any ardent lover should be. However, I was left wondering where his mike pack might be hidden.

Birdsong ends with the sounds of the soaring titular birdsong.

The play is a streamlined version of the book, but this production does not bring out the pain and inhumanity of war, or dying and surviving in a living hell, nor the horrific psychological effects of war.

Tag Archives: Charlie Russell

THE COMEDY ABOUT SPIES

★★★★

Noël Coward Theatre

THE COMEDY ABOUT SPIES

Noël Coward Theatre

★★★★

“another all-conquering crowd-pleasing triumph”