Comedy theatre has never gone away, but it appears to be enjoying a renaissance. Rising companies such as Sleeping Trees are winning a reputation, the long established Spymonkey are working with Tim Crouch to stage The Complete Deaths (performing every death scene in Shakespeare) and Peepolykus are collaborating with Gemma Bodinetz to give Flaubert a makeover in The Massive Tragedy of Emma Bovary. The West End has both The Play That Goes Wrong and Peter Pan Goes Wrong by Mischief, who have a lot of fun with the conventions of theatre.
So, too, do the young company Wildheart & Lyric in this comedy revenge thriller. Wolf Meat is set in Croydon, in the home of Gangsta Granny-style crime baron Margaret and her grandson, Wolfie, who are proud to be “top of the south London drugs tree”. But PC Dawn Taylor is out to bring justice to Croydon and determined to cut Wolfie and his overaffectionate granny down whatever the personal cost – even if it means pretending to be Wolfie’s pornographic fantasy.
There are moments of mirth in a show that has a pleasingly surreal edge under the direction of Complicite’s Mick Barnfather. The audience interaction is neatly handled. But characters are underdeveloped, and much of the comic potential is dissipated by a lack of rigour in plotting and a structure that has far less support than Dawn Taylor’s corset. It needs a dramaturg. This kind of theatre has to be tightly sprung, and too often here it feels as if the company are simply reaching for the next gag or overstretching the one in progress, which does nothing to give this likable but flimsy show impetus.
- At the Pleasance, London, until 16 January. Box office: 020-7609 1800.
