Old hat

Lloyd Evans

Wednesday, 16th January 2008

La Cage aux Folles
Menier Chocolate Factory

The British Ambassador’s Belly Dancer
Arcola

Angry Young Man
Trafalgar Studio

I went to the press night of two short plays by Ben Woolf only to find that the second had been cancelled. Not, I hope, because the first wasn’t good. It was fine. A perfect example of its type. Exuberant, clever, weightless student whimsy. Mind you, the audience reacted to it with gales and hurricanes of laughter, which it scarcely deserved. That’s why I usually avoid the official openings of plays. Theatre is stagy enough without the added histrionics of a press night. For some reason, producers always kid themselves that the critics will be fooled by a house packed with cronies and claqueurs humping and howling with simulated laughter. Come on. We’re not that thick. And nothing is so obvious and so off-putting as the fake guffaws of coerced siblings, ambitious, dagger-eyed mothers and hooting, braying, last-gasp grandparents. Ben Woolf’s frenetic comedy follows the progress of Yuri, a Russian immigrant lost in London who falls in with a gang of thugs and upper-class conmen. There’s an interesting formal innovation: all four actors play all of the parts which means that each of them plays Yuri. It should be confusing but it works superbly. In the show’s best running gag one of the actors has the task of adding atmosphere but he hasn’t read the script. His last-minute impersonations of dogs, statues and other decorations are pretty funny. Woolf and his troupe are charming and talented so let’s hope they soon advance beyond the smug cleverness of the student rag. Angry Young Man (misleading title) is like dining on candyfloss.