Mousetrap is the inspiration, surely. Not the Agatha Christie whodunnit, but the board game which involves all sorts of convoluted trips, traps and gadgets to snare the prey.
Michael Taylor's stage set for this warm-hearted tribute to a British classic is itself a masterpiece. The dilapidated Kings Cross house is crooked, full of surprises and capable of energetic meltdown when a train goes by.
Rotating, it reveals new opportunities beyond the confines of Mrs Wilberforce's twee fiefdom and when the heist at the centre of this dark caper comes about... well, let's just say Michael Bentine would be pleased.
This is a generous romp from the pen of Graham Linehan who knows how to create inoffensive eccentrics. Director Sean Foley packs the stage with enough trickery to bamboozle Barnum and the cast rise to the potential of script, direction, co-star and stage.
The story sees the redoutable Mrs Wilberforce (played with shy aplomb by the redoutable Marcia Warren) rent out her rooms to friends who claim to be musicians but are, in reality, planning a robbery. When dotty Mrs Wilberforce cottons on, one of their number must live up to the title of the play and the fractures begin to show.
The story, set in the post-war years of bobbies and lodgers, is so well known the script doesn't waste time with exposition. As a result, much of the tension and a large slice of the creepiness is removed in favour of what amounts to a glorious black farce, packed with broad one-liners, slapstick and setpiece sight gags.
Orchestrating the mayhem is the wonderfuly sinuous Peter Capaldi as greasy Professor Marcus, forever teetering on the edge of anarchy but with sufficient self-regard to hold the unravelling strands together.
The characters in the Ealing film had little chance to shine. Here, they each have their moments: James Fleet as the caddish cross-dressing con man Major Courtney (who "lacks confidence as a man"), Ben Miller as east European cut-throat Louis Harvey, Stephen Wight as pill-popping wideboy Harry Robinson and Clive Rowe as simple giant One Round.
Yes, occasionally the stage business is creaky and obvious, and some of the jokes are old groaners but it's all done with a wink and a twinkle. Besides, who can fault a production that throws everything - including a temperamental kitchen sink - at the task of warming hearts.
– From December 2011
