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Comedy parody of the James Bond stories with a talented cast, but a script that tries to do too many things and loses its way.Summary
Rating
Ok
Spy Movie: The Play! at the Hope Theatre, is a loving parody of Ian Fleming’s James Bond stories. It is written and directed by Matthew Howell and Jack Michael Stacey, who have both appeared in the hit West End comedy The Play That Goes Wrong.
The loose concept is that The Writer (Emily Waters) is here to present their screenplay based on the final novel of famed novelist Ian Flemish. The character explains that they can’t get the funding to turn it into a film, so are presenting it instead as a “movie play” of “the greatest spy movie never made”. We then enter the story of master spy Jane Blonde (Jo Hartland), who is on a mission to find the author Ian Flemish (played by Stacey) and stop some evil villains stealing secrets from the manuscript of his latest novel Deep Pussy, featuring Flemish’s spy hero Dick Hardwood.
What follows is a madcap tale involving numerous global locations, a host of familiar spy movie characters played by the multi-roling cast of four (including a Q-like character called Mr Cashless Payment and a German baddy called Herr Ring), car chases, explosions and even a scene set in space. The show makes the point that this is all being performed in a small pub theatre in Islington and that leads to some inventive staging, the best moment being a mountain ski chase performed by two Barbie dolls. It even uses elements of the Bond franchise such as obvious product placement, with an ongoing gag mentioning that the show is sponsored by “Michael Malaney’s car dealership, Islington”.
The ensemble of four are all very talented comedy performers and present the show with skill and great timing. Waters and Theo Toksvig-Stewart are particularly impressive, playing between them a collection of forty-plus characters, all of whom are distinctive. The cast even managed to incorporate actual mistakes, such as a curtain falling down and a few fluffed lines, into the rhythm of the show, getting added comedy value, which is a hard feat to pull off.
As directors, Howell and Stacey work well with the intimate space of the Hope Theatre and the whole thing has a great pace, although a few sight gags did get lost. There is also nice work from composer Stephen Hyde, who has created pastiches of famous Bond themes that play throughout the show.
The problem lies with the script, which tries to do too much. The jokes mostly land when the material focuses purely on the Bond parody, but Howell and Stacey have thrown in another plot underneath this concerning the people who have made the show. As an audience we never get to fully know these characters and so the jokes concerning the production going wrong don’t fully work, and it all becomes quite confusing. The script also never truly finds its style. There is an odd mix of pretty lurid old-fashioned sex jokes and progressive commentary on the inherent sexism of the Bond novels, but the writing never allows one to comment on the other and they sit oddly side by side.
The whole thing is in need of a bit of editorial tightening to allow the comedy to land more with an audience. At the moment, the writing tries to cover too much ground and the show comes across as a bit of a mess. This is a production that shows promise and there are a few great moments but it feels like it is a couple of drafts away from being a truly satisfying entertainment.
Written and directed by: Matthew Howell and Jack Michael Stacey
Composer: Stephen Hyde
Assistant Director: Antonia Salib
Spy Movie: The Play! plays at The Hope Theatre until 23 December. Further information and bookings can be found here.
