Review: LOOK BEHIND YOU, Theatre at the Tabard

To be read in that deep American voice we all know… “If you were falling off your seat at The Play That Goes Wrong or loudly laughing at Noises Off, you’ll be beside yourself at Look Behind You”.

Okay, it’s not quite either of those two blockbusters, but Strut & Fret has gone back 25 years to revive their backstage comedy of calamities and supplemented it with plenty of updates for the 21st century (ie references to TikTok). I didn’t see the show in 1999, but I’ll wager that it’s just as funny now and a lot more poignant.

We’re backstage at that beloved location for playwrights, a decrepit provincial theatre, where a panto is just about on its feet as the rain seeps in fusing the electrics. If the characters are somewhat familiar, from the cynical old hands to the wide-eyed wannabees via a boozer and a sleb on the slide, they’re no less amusing company for that. The delight, as ever, comes through the detail of the performances, the sharpness of the writing and timing of the gags.

It’s all beautifully done stuff. Daniel Wain is the biggest presence as The Dame, knocking out the double-entendres for the audiences of locals and the odd coach party, but, backstage, wig off, slap still on, he’s just Sam, desperately trying to balance the books as the roof caves in (literally and metaphorically), his lifelong partner a victim of the covid.

He’s surrounded by Dick Whittington’s cast, thrown together in a seething hotbed of tensions, personal and professional. Take your pick of whom you most enjoy, but my faves were Mia Skytte as the TV soap star relentlessly hissed at as Queen Rat while hankering for ‘legitimate theatre’, Stephen Pratt, effortlessly charming as the ageless pro who just seems to get by and Annabel Miller as the much harassed stage manager, full of wisdom and acerbic asides.

The joy of this format (as seen recently Oh No It Isn’t at the Jack Studio Theatre) is the licence it offers to ladle on the pathos, because we’re never more than a few minutes and a quick pivot of the scenery from a snippet of panto to lighten the load and hit the guilty pleasure sweet spot. By alternating the highs and lows, neither gets too much, even across a couple of hours or more. 

Wain, this time in his writer’s role, uses that permission well. The script punches plenty of holes in celebrity culture but also finds genuine warmth in the camaraderie productions like the Brittania Theatre’s panto develop, require even. There’s a soupçon of nostalgia too, but it never curdles to sentimentality.

He does indulge himself just the once in a spectacular tirade against the UK government’s (indeed, UK governments’) hostility to the arts in general and theatre in particular. Of course, it’s preaching to the choir in leafy Chiswick, but it’s no less valid for that. I wasn’t quite bold enough to risk stoping the shpw to applaud it, but I probably should have. It barely needs saying that the whole play is an allegory for the sorry state in which our state finds itself.

Now Strut & Fret have emerged from their long hibernation, I hope we’ll see Look Behind You back as an alternative Christmas show in 2024, although I can’t imagine that Katie Price, Nadine Dorries and Ulrike Jonsson will be tweeting their best wishes from the opening night’s red carpet.      

Look Behind You at Theatre at the Tabard until 3 February

Photos: Marc Brenner

 

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