There are two unforgivable crimes in this 17th-century heist caper based on the attempted robbery of King Charles II’s crown jewels by an Irish rebel. The first is that it manages to make an intriguing and little-known historical incident bland. The second is that it enlists some of the cream of British comedy – Al Murray in his stage debut, Neil Morrissey, Mel Giedroyc, Joe Thomas – and none of them manage to find a funny line between them. If there has to be a third, it is that it sets Carrie Hope Fletcher’s strong, beautiful voice to random, anodyne songs.
Directed by Sean Foley, it tells the story of Colonel Thomas Blood (Aidan McArdle), a notorious thorn in the side of the Stuart crown and government, who on 9 May 1671 attempted to purloin the jewels from the Tower of London, with Robert Perrot (Morrissey, who looks like a rocker in period dress), Blood’s son (Thomas, of The Inbetweeners fame) and an actor posing as his wife (Tanvi Virmani). Stabbing the keeper (also played by Murray), they are stopped by his son (Adonis Siddique), just back from Flanders. Extraordinarily, Blood was pardoned by the king and apparently served his days out as a spy for him.
This attempted act of subversion was arguably as ambitious as that of Guy Fawkes, so it is fascinating that it is not in our national consciousness in the same way. But this production will not ignite any curiosity.
As Michael Taylor’s sets twizzle from room to room, it looks conceptually dashed off with sub-pantomime grade characters. Written by Simon Nye, who gave us Men Behaving Badly (he is reunited with Morrissey here), the jokes are puerile and the show’s few songs, by Nye and Grant Olding, lame.
Murray’s King Charles is a tyrant and a sleazeball, pointing to women in the audience and ordering his footmen to bring them to his room. Other characters seem as priapically preoccupied, but Nye’s sexed-up script brings a welter of beached innuendoes.
There is some amusement to hearing Murray’s clipped, aristocratic vowels, while Fletcher is good as the stroppy Elizabeth and Thomas brings his Inbetweeners’ haplessness as Blood’s wimpy son, but this cannot sustain us for two hours.
To top it all, in a moment of Pub Landlord-style audience participation, an audience member trumps the humour in the script, telling Murray’s king that he is from Chorleywood and therefore a hunter. This is the funniest moment in a woefully tedious evening.
• At Garrick theatre, London, until 16 September.
