Everybody’s hot for Mischief’s new action-packed thriller THE COMEDY ABOUT SPIES, gripping audiences with laughter from April 2025 at the Noël Coward Theatre. The multi award-winning team behind The Play That Goes Wrong and The Comedy About a Bank Robbery step into 1960s London in this hilarious spy caper full of misunderstanding, miscommunication, and mistaken identity.
A rogue British agent steals plans for a top-secret new weapon. Spies from the CIA and the KGB assemble at London’s Piccadilly Hotel to track down the British mole and obtain the file. When a young British couple and an older actor auditioning for the title role in the first James Bond film check into the hotel, the stakes reach boiling point in this riotous world of Cold War farce.
__Assisted Performances:__
Audio Described - 6 June, 7:30pm
Captioned - 15 August, 2:30pm
BSL - 22 June, 2:30pm
What could easily have come off the rails is majestically held together by Matt DiCarlo’s razor-sharp direction. Lines snap with a military precision, the action sequences have a real zip about them and the most tender scenes draw genuine emotion. The finale to act one is a series of farcical decisions and mistakes which somehow coalesce into a masterpiece of co-ordinated chaos; to paraphrase Sir Terry Pratchett, this show’s most memorable sequences only happen because a large number of things amazingly fail to go wrong.
Even for Mischief, this is an ambitious show, with rarely a pause in the action. Farce is one of the hardest forms of comedy to get right, particularly physically. Accuracy in timing is everything and movement director Shelley Maxwell and director Matt DiCarlo have done a remarkable job in making all the pratfalls, scene changes and general chaos look effortless. The Noël Coward is a large venue and needs a production that can fill the space. Fortunately designer David Farley has created around 20 locations, making great use of trapdoors, travelators and one impressive set which manages to fit four separate hotel rooms on stage at once. Johanna Town’s lighting works in perfect harmony, highlighting every physical gag.
| 2025 | West End |
West End |
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