Three actors are worrying about how to play their roles in a stage version of the great movie. Rick (Gavin Mitchell) keeps trying out new ways to deliver iconic lines, in a manner that suggests he's pretty clueless, and paves the way for parody to come. The play moves on into a fast paced retelling of the essential moments of the film, using many of the original lines, but now payed very much for laughs, and with freeze moments where one of the cast reveals an interesting fact about the 1942 original.
The cast perform, multiple roles, even Mitchell around whom the action largely revolves. Clare Waugh is both Ilsa and Strasser, Kevin Lennon both Renault and Laszlo, and several others bedsides. Sam is a wooden doll, sat at a wooden piano, and moved around the stage as required. These limitations heighten the comedy, and seeing Lennon conduct a conversation between the French police chief and the Nazi was slapstick at it's finest. Plus a special mention to Waugh for going the full McGonagall when her Strasser gets shot!
It's slickly unslick, with complex choreography, 'fog' from an aerosol can and ham acting at it's finest. Mitchell playing smooth Rick with awkward mechanical movements is an image that's hard to erase from the mind. He is the perfect pastiche Bogart and the ensemble performance is excellent.
Far from traducing memories of a great movie it enhances them. And the film doesn't invite the audience to singalong to La Marseillaise, does it? (Nor does it, in my memories at least, mention Wester Hailes...)
Comedy gold indeed.
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