MAGIC . ALWAYS BETTER WHEN DISASTROUS.
God bless Mischief Theatre. Eleven years ago this coming May I saw THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG in the tiny downstairs space at Trafalgar Studios (upstairs, a dour Macbeth was giving way to Pinter). It was fresh in from the Old Red Lion, where its creators, Henry Shields , Henry Lewis and Jonathan Sayer began their fringe career. I am happy to say that my Times review drew producer Kenny Wax to drop in, and notice that their anarchic student-revue wit was , a rare thing, balanced by exceptional and perfectionist discipline.
That set in motion a decade of success and awards, up West and on tour (the original is still at the Duchess, Peter Pan Goes Wrong touring the land after Broadway). They have brought much joy. It’s the theatrical immediacy that does it: interestingly, their TV versions don’t quite do it, polished as they are. This is life done live and dangerous, as it should be, and as an early-adopter Mischievite I am proud.
Now – after their Magic-goes-Wrong collaboration with veterans Penn & Teller, here’s Henry Lewis centre stage in the role of a wannabe Derren Brown, a big bearded figure of genial ambition fresh out of divorce, having an ill-advised crack at being heir to the great music-hall magic acts, and getting it wrong, Tommy-Cooper style. Spooky announcements precede him, audiences put secret words in glass bowls, and overhead is a multiply locked secure safe (“suspended till further notice, as I am from the Magic Circle”).
Lewis is immediately funny, noisily cheerful , portraying a man attempting authority with an undertow of desperation. He boasts of a coming Vegas tour under his manager “Bob Kojak” (of whom we learn more later) and claims membership of an important online chatroom for “high profile men on low incomes”. The two-hour riot of a show is partly very gifted standup – there’s brilliant audience manipulation without humiliation , everyone delighted to be drawn in – and partly proper theatricality, exaggerated projections and tricks, and a running joke of his inability to get the sound-effects right. The joy of it though is that sometimes the mind-reading is brilliantly lucky and sometimes the deft tricks work – he can do the old newspaper ripping one, though all the headlines in it are about how terrible his act is. But often they don’t. There’s a very British satisfaction in that.
He plays with obviousness. His “guess what colour I am thinking of” is backed by a bright orange screen and the first audience member to come up is in fact Jonathan Sayer, a slight, geeky figure unwisely clad in a T shirt saying AUDIENCE MEMBER, later ANOTHER AUDENCE MEMBER. Everyone by now is giggling helplessly (it hardly needs the sudden giant squirrel). He moves on to parodic versions of every old chestnut: the secret word revealed, the ’30s style scientific woo-woo of brains in jars playing chess, a couple of quickfire alleged miracles, a ’20’s style ouija-board session with Sayers, and some Uri Geller attempted spoon-bending – now that DOES become proper theatre . There’s even a radio mind-reading device pleasingly insulting the audience as we appear on the big screen.
We just kept on laughing, my millennial companion and I and some 700 hundred others, just as I did nearly eleven years ago when Mischief first flowered. That’s valuable, more than ever after the Covid years. MIschief have done the state some service, and we know it. Here’s to them.
box office theapollotheatre.co.uk to 28th April from 22.50
rating four
theatreCat 