Review: Friends Help You Move, Etcetera Theatre 

A couple of inept Irish criminals, Nally (John Ward, who also scripts and directs) and Macker (Daire O’Doherty) are sitting around, dreaming of a big job. They are low level criminals, they might even consider themselves ordinary decent criminals, they snatch a few handbags, steal a few cars. One of them robbed the local chipper last week with a screwdriver. The same chipper he frequents weekly… not the brightest, not criminal masterminds.

However – they do now have a plan. They have worked out a score and aim to enlist a local connection, a major gangster, O’Hara (Will Fihn Ramsay) to their aid. This is how they will move up; they’ll get access to guns and start to make a bit of a name for themselves. There’s a lot of funny banter, a good camaraderie between the two. The script and the actors give a good suggestion that Nally might be the brains (such as they are) and Macker the muscle. Ward and O’Doherty very quickly give them an utterly believable friendship alongside their, uh, professional relationship.

The only issue is that O’Hara has a bit of a reputation and is clearly levels above in the local hierarchy, unafraid to use extreme violence – or at least rumoured to be. There’s good humour in Ward’s script as the two plan not the job but how they’ll enlist him – and why they are afraid of him. Their contradictory plan to give O’Hara just the broad strokes but at the same time provide him full details brings good early laughs.

Notably impressive is the blood work by Christina Conti and the introduction of Ramsay who is physically dragged onto the stage but then has to lie still for an extended period. The beating O’Hara has taken looks convincing, what looks like real cuts and damage to his face, not just a bit of fake blood thrown around. Ramsay’s stillness combined with Conti’s effects makes for a very effective piece of stagecraft.

There’s a moment of real self-awareness in Ward’s script suggesting the plot has ended up approaching gangster cliche and not very original. It suggests we might go somewhere more interesting but, in the end, sticks with the dry, black humour tongue-in-cheek gangster piece. Ward nods to us that he is writing a gangster cliché and lets us judge if playing this for those laughs is enough.

It’s a nice contrast, our two inept criminals think they are on their way to becoming serious criminals, tooled up hard men but Friends Help You Move is more self-aware and knows exactly what it is. It finds a lot of humour in the gaps between their ambitions and their abilities. 

Written and directed by John Ward
Make-up and Technical by Christina Conti
Lighting Design by Alexandra Shelest
Produced by Yeah Yeah Productions

Friends Help You Move has completed its run at this year’s Camden Fringe.