Inside No. 9 Stage/Fright West End review – Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton deliver an all-encompassing adaptation

The BBC series Inside No 9 is a phenomenon. Over nine seasons and 55 episodes, each lasting 30 minutes, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith have twisted and turned their way through a sequence of mini-plays that sit somewhere between Hancock’s Half Hour and The Twilight Zone.

This stage version is both a spin-off and a final hurrah, since the last instalment screened on TV last year. It has already sold out to the legion of Pemberton and Shearsmith fans, but a nationwide tour will surely follow.

In fact, although the stage show provides a shiver of recognition for all those who have loved the original stories – bound together by some relevance to the number nine – it also works perfectly well for the uninitiated, with a structure that literally does what it says in the title, combining staging and fright.

The first half – Stage – begins with a wickedly funny scene set in the audience for Hamlet, which begins to lay the trails of misdirection and suggestion for which Inside No 9 is famous. It then proceeds into an adaptation of the episode titled “Bernie Clifton’s Dressing Room”, in which comedy double act Cheese (Shearsmith) and Crackers (Pemberton) reunite after 30 years for one last gig.

The pleasure of seeing the uptight Shearsmith and his drunken partner collide is interrupted by a sequence inspired by another episode in which two cat burglars kidnap the wrong man. Again, in keeping with the spirit of the series, each night features a guest star in this role – on the night I attended, it took the form of Matthew Kelly, gently bemused by the mayhem unfolding around him.

All of this unfolds, on Grace Smart’s flexible sets, with the logic of a dream and within the frame of the fact that Pemberton and Shearsmith have appeared as themselves to tell us that Wyndham’s itself is a haunted theatre, stalked by the ghost of an actress who died when a stunt went wrong.

The second half – Fright – takes this idea and runs with it. It begins in an asylum and ends with a dim actress terrified that she has seen a ghost. En route, throughout, there are not only references for viewers of the TV series – a joke about “A Quiet Night In”, references to “Sardines” and “One Last Trip” – but also layers of meta-theatricality, with gags about the theatre, celebrities taking over the West End and Jamie Lloyd’s use of video.

There are moments of sheer fright, but there are also a lot of joyously silly jokes, both physical – the understudy stuck in a cupboard who can barely walk, she is so cramped – and verbal. “If you want to truly shock people, show them the bar prices.”

Nimbly directed by Simon Evans, and ably supported by a cast that features Anna Francolini at her most sardonic and Miranda Hennessey as a succession of ditzy blondes, the greatest virtue of Inside No 9 in its theatrical form is the presence of Pemberton and Shearsmith, darting between roles and gags, and seemingly having the best of times. Their humour is warm, and embracing; the cleverness of their story-telling robust.

They make you want to spend time with them and their presence makes Inside No 9 on stage a pleasure. It’s not radical, or even as ground-breaking as the television shows which have spawned it. But it is great, all-encompassing fun.