“Original, deceptively sharp and occasionally brilliant.” Ed Cripps ★★★★★

Straight Guys Do Anal ★★★★★

St Catz, Wednesday 25^th November, 2:05pm

Review by Ed Cripps

This post-modern take on rehearsals for Cuppers was original, deceptively sharp and occasionally brilliant. The first five minutes were wonderful and, had the rest of play continued in the same vein, this would be exceptional. Joe Murphy is particularly impressive as the director, by turns nervy and smug, sincere and disarmingly rude, but always likeable. Like Peter de Lane in Rob Brydon’s Directors Commentary, the director figure becomes an inherent source of bathos, with his constant interruptions and asides (“it’s so charged it’s brilliant”), although comments like “that’s beautiful” wear a touch thin after a while. As in Noises Off, it takes real precision to make chaos look good on stage and the cast do rather well here (though perhaps a bit too much screaming from Pomegranate at the end) and, while there is not much plot to speak of, one senses that this is the point: the title is just one of many red herrings. It falters at points towards the end and I wonder if they could have gone further with some comical set pieces, such as the use of lighting (lighting up the wrong actor, etc). Overall the writing is raw, but strong and shows glimpses of something very exciting. Hugely enjoyable.