Review: THE BANG GANG, Riverside Studios

In Tinned Laughter’s The Bang Gang, Don Lambrini is in trouble. He got on the wrong boat leaving Palermo in 1946 and, instead of his preferred destination of the Bronx, ended up in Blackpool. Thirty years later, his “waste management” firm is under threat from local competitors and now his nemesis has sent a button man to whack him. “Fray Bentos sends his regards,” says the hitman. “Why do they only send their regards when they want to murder someone?” wails the mafia boss as the assassin’s bullets plough into him.

Before the don is even six feet under, the talk turns to succession. Lying on his death bed in 23 different pieces, he nominates his right-hand man Aldente Panino but — between secretly recording conversations so he can rat out his own crew to the cops — Lambrini’s son Jack does everything he can to undermine the new capo. Meanwhile, Bentos (self-described as “Pie baker. Dream maker. Sexual deviant.”) is waiting in the wings to take over everything that once belonged to his mortal rival.

As a Sicilian, I was worried about how the British cast would tackle the particular accents, mannerisms and dialect of the Mediterranean’s largest island. Every single one of my compatriots loves food almost as much as they love their own mother so would there be much chomping of cannoli, caponata and cassata?

Sadly not as writer Hughie Shepherd-Cross gets around the issue of authenticity with a simple, if astoundingly implausible, plot choice: on his way to Blighty, Lambrini reads a book on New York gangster slang and — bada bing, bada boom! — he (and everyone in his crew) now speak as if they’ve walked straight off the set of Goodfellas. Do any of these Italians speak a word of the mother language? Fergeddaboutit!

The handy trio of Fred Cohen, Fabian Bevan and Pinch Punch Improv’s Hannah Johnson have great fun deploying slapstick and quick-fire gags, some of which (like the one above) are incisive and genuinely funny. The team dynamic is superlative, the perma-macho character portrayals are a little samey and a lot like pastrami (simultaneously beefy yet hammy) but admirable given the thin writing, and the crowd work — especially from Johnson as the menacing Aldente — helps pull in at least the first couple of rows. 

Dramatically, The Bang Gang shares plenty of DNA with The Pretend Men’s Police Cops franchise with a trio of multirolling actors making dynamic use of a basic set while milking cheap gags from every gangster flick from The Godfather to The Sopranos and back through a script packed to the brim with absurdity, laughs and general silliness. 

The chief villain here is not Bentos but Shepherd-Cross’s script. Despite The Bang Gang having seen action at the Edinburgh Fringe and in London, it still feels like a work in progress. With twists that are less M. Night Shyamalan and more overcooked fusilli, experienced fringe theatre director Auguste Voulton rolls through underwritten scenes that serve as the soggy underpinning for a hacky premise and even hackier spoofing. No cliché is left unturned and much of the dialogue has all the subtlety of a rifle butt to the side of the head.

Painful quips (“waste management? Are we a diet company?”) stink out the place, sometimes sinking better material that follows directly after. A running joke about Barnsley v Blackpool hasn’t travelled well south of the Watford Gap and, even up north, would probably only amuse those still fighting The War Of The Roses. 

The comedy was previously known as Gang Bang with the change in title suggesting that - like his writing style - Shepherd-Cross wants to play it safe at at time when Alex Hill’s Edinburgh Fringe hit Why I Stuck A Flare Up My Arse For England has proved a wild success and has returned to London once again. Go figure, as they say.

The “fish-out-of-water gangster” scenario is a tried and tested one, having been the recent basis for the Sylvester Stallone vehicle Tulsa King and the underrated Norway-set Lillehammer, while it has been decades since Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola first made their mark on the mafia genre. With all that in mind, surely an audience deserves something a little snappier and closer to the bone than what is delivered here? 

The Bang Gang continues at Riverside Studios until 2 November.

Photo credit: Tinned Laughter