Review: Gangbang, Seven Dials Playhouse

Over the past couple of years there have been two sketch groups, Crybabies and Police Cops, who have been at the very top of their game, producing hour long narratives packed with very funny jokes. But now they’ve got competition in the form of writer Hughie Shepherd-Cross and his talented cast (Fabian Bevan, Freddie Cohen and Hannah Johnson), creators of this gag-packed Italian mobster spoof.

Knowledge of the more famous mob movies like Goodfellas and The Godfather will definitely lead to you getting more out of the production, but it’s not required to still enjoy this fast paced mix of farce, slapstick and parody. The play begins with a very brief segment where we learn that a mob boss ends up in Blackpool instead of New York, before a time jump establishes they now rule over the northern town.

Perhaps covering a little too much ground early on, the plotting continues at breakneck speed as the mob boss soon ends up in hospital, and with his dying breath announces who the heir to his empire will be, much to the shock of his son who assumed it would be him. Once the new boss is revealed it calms down however, and makes the most of parodying all of the conventions you’d expect to see in a gangster flick, and a good few that you really wouldn’t.

There’s a pleasing daftness to many of the running jokes, like the inexplicable hatred all of the characters have for life guards, which helps make it feel more innovative and playful than the majority of Airplane/Naked Gun style spoofs. A scene set in a hospital has some very funny visual gags, and there’s some minor use of video projection, though its presence does highlight that this could have been even stronger if they’d doubled down on those aspects.

The dialogue is what really sets this play apart though: there’s an impressive amount of jokes in nearly every single line, and the wordplay and puns are almost always laugh out loud funny. It makes what are initially caricatures very sympathetic, and the show is whimsical throughout, with the occasional bit of fourth wall breaking or amusing observations on the ridiculous aspects of the narrative.

Two of the cast largely take on one role each but a third has a number of characters who only appear briefly, and sometimes a lack of costume budget and mannerisms mean it’s a little hard to tell them apart from each other. This isn’t anything which will spoil your enjoyment of the show however, and hopefully over the run it will be worked upon, as otherwise this is a laugh packed romp that at seventy minutes doesn’t outstay its welcome for a single second.

Written and produced by: Hughie Shepherd-Cross
Directed by: Auguste Voulton

Gangbang plays at the Seven Dials Playhouse until Saturday 1 March.