Caught in the Net

Let’s do the Timewarp again:

It’s astounding,
Time is fleeting,
The West End is out of control.
But listen closely –
Not for very much longer,

Ray Cooney’s
Back in town.

We remember
When the West End was safe:
Laughing
Out loud in those moments when
The farce would go out of control.

But here’s Bill Kenwright calling –
Let’s do the Timewarp again.

It’s just a slam of the doors,
And then a pratfall on the stairs.
With one wife in Streatham,
You have another in Wimbledon,
But it’s the kids from each
Who really drive you insane,

Let’s do the Timewarp again.

With apologies to Richard O’Brien and The Rocky Horror Show, the above summarizes the plot of Ray Cooney’s latest West End farce, Caught in the Net, which sends us spiralling back into the chaos of the life of a bigamous taxi driver, John Smith, whom we first met in Cooney’s 1983 comedy, Run for Your Wife, trying to keep his lives and wives apart.

That play, which ran for over eight years at five addresses in the West End, won the ultimate accolade when it was named one of the Top 100 Plays of the 20th century in the National Theatre’s millennium poll. This sequel has already earned it the title “the funniest play of the year so far” by one of my esteemed colleagues, and though my own vote would go to Feelgood, Cooney undoubtedly launches a frantic but ferocious assault on a uniquely British comic theatrical sensibility – the kind celebrated so gorgeously by Noises Off.

But while Noises Off is a send-up of the farcical sex comedy genre, Caught in the Net is the real McCoy: this is, indeed, the play that the woebegotten cast of Noises Off could have been presenting in Weston-Super-Mare. But in Cooney’s own fantastically well-drilled production, there are no comparable production mishaps. There’s only the blissful appeal of an expert cast going full tilt to add to, and eventually unravel, the hopeless complications that John Smith (a superbly controlled, out-of-control Robert Daws), sets in motion when he discovers that his son
and daughter by his separate wives have hooked up in an internet chatroom – and are even now planning to meet up for a date.

Yes, Cooney has also got with the internet (and mobile phone) age, and seen the comic potentials thereof. While on the one hand watching this production feels like entering a comic timewarp (even the intro music, an instrumental rendition of Love and Marriage, is the same as that which graced Run for Your Wife), there’s also something refreshing about watching an evening so nakedly intent on providing its audience with a good time. No small part of this is due to the fantastic comic performances of the agile Russ Abbot and the agelessly treasurable Eric Sykes. As peels of laughter echoed around the theatre, I surrendered to simply enjoying myself.

– Mark Shenton