The starting premise is simple enough – a philandering Conservative minister (Richard Willey played by Andrew Hall) arranges to meet a married secretary (Jane Worthington played by Susie Amy mostly in her underwear) in the Westminster Hotel with plans to substitute an all-night Commons debate for some slap and tickle. Then things start to go wrong. Very wrong. And so he calls on his personal assistant George Pigden (Shaun Williamson) to help him out of a sticky situation.
The play starts gently enough although there were plenty of chuckles from the outset. The political references are bang up to date with mentions of Teresa May, Jeremy Corbin and Brexit. But it is the increasingly bizarre situation that drives the comedy. In some respects it was all rather silly, old style humour but in other respects it was an artfully concocted comedy.
At the end of Act One I had no idea where the plot was going, but things had really speeded up. I was gripped by the story and the twists and turns created by overlays of complex misunderstanding and preposterous concocted explanation. I desperately wanted to know what would happen in the second act.
The set was a hotel suite. And there’s a window through which just about all the characters pass at some point in the play. And a cupboard.
All of the cast were superb but special mentions were deserved by Shaun Williamson who’s facial expressions and gestures were hysterical and Hotel Manager Arthur Bostrom who took polite indignation to a new level. Even periphery characters such as Pamela Willey (played by Sue Holderness) and the waiter (James Holmes) made a big contribution to proceedings.
By the end of the show there were non-stop belly laughs from the entire audience. It really was amusing and a fabulous way to pass a dull Monday evening.
My companion said that he enjoyed the play a lot and found it surprisingly funny. It’s a brilliant farce – owing as much to the slapstick humour, physical comedy and expert timing of the highly skilled cast hamming it up as it does to the fast-moving, innuendo-filled script.
The play runs this week at Richmond Theatre in Surrey http://www.atgtickets.com/shows/out-of-order/
