Sometimes life can play the cruellest tricks. Five years ago, Toby Jones was a jobbing actor who thought he had finally hit the big time with a minor part in Notting Hill. Shortly after filming, he received a note from the producers regretting that his contribution had been cut from the final edit.
Jones resolved to immortalise the character the Notting Hill producers had seen fit to obliterate in an anecdotal play about a small-part player's attempts to mix it with the big boys. And then suddenly fame came and tapped him on the shoulder while he was looking the other way. Toby Jones is hot property at the moment, being a vital - some would say the funniest - component of the Right Size's surprise hit, the Play What I Wrote. For the past few months, Jones has been sharing the Wyndhams stage with Ralph Fiennes, Kenneth Branagh and any number of celebrity special guests who have queued up to be humiliated by him. Now he has had to walk away from it all to fulfill a prior engagement, performing his modest play about life as a failure.
Jones is a pleasure to watch whatever he does, which makes it feel a bit greedy having him all to ourselves in a small auditorium. That said, this self-scripted monologue - with resourceful live sound commentary from foley artist Ayse Tashkiran - is not the most substantial material he has ever worked on, but the joy of Jones is to be found in his rubbery physical presence and slightly misshapen sense of dignity.
If God moulded Adam from human clay, then Jones must have come from a leftover lump of Plasticine. He peers at us through his little round eyes in permanent amazement that his face should have been flattened by successive blows of fate. Maybe success will spoil him. But now that he's a star, one confidently expects him to wear his new status with the same rumpled, bad coordination as the rest of his wardrobe.
Until April 13. Box office: 0113-213 7700.
