'The Comedy About A Bank Robbery' Criterion Theatre *****

For the last two years, Mischief Theatre’s production of, ‘The Play that Goes Wrong’ has been making people roll in the aisles of the Duchess Theatre, then again, there is a question whether this is a one-hit wonder for the theatre company, but not in this specific exemplification. The West End production of Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields’ 2016 play, ‘The Comedy About a Bank Robbery’ was an hugely gleeful show that leaves you in absolute stitches, what is more, the interpretations were eloquent and really funny.

‘The Comedy About a Bank Robbery’ is set in Minneapolis in America where we’re introduced to prisoner, Mitch Ruscitti who has gone AWOL from jail and has a plan to embezzle a $500,000 diamond from a bank in Minneapolis who is handled by Robin Freeboys (Henry Lewis) and the bank’s antiqued intern, Warren Stax. Anyhow it appears that Mitch’s course of action is going to be destroyed by bossy mother, Ruth Monoghan (Nancy Wallinger), yet what she is not aware of is that her son, Sam Monoghan (Dave Hearn) is a pickpocket and has been doing this for some time. Due to this, Mitch goes to visit Robin Freeboys’ daughter Caprice who happens to be Mitch’s ex-girlfriend in the hope that she can help him with obtaining the diamond, on the other hand, when he sees Sam tries to court her, he does see red and for Sam, he has to imitate Robin Freeboys in a number of rather sticky situations so that he is not caught by the police due to his pickpocketing. When Warren Stax enters the room with an array of gifts, he goes down on bended knee with considerable difficulty and proposes to Caprice and in order to get rid of him as quick as humanly possible she accepts his proposal. Nevertheless, as Sam has been posing as her father, he accepts that Warren can be his daughter’s husband and when he comes into contact with the real Robin Freeboys, he calls him his soon to be father-in-law, understandably Robin is in utter shock and due to all the pressure of the bank and with Officer Randal Shuck (Jeremy Lloyd) investigating the whereabouts of Mitch it looks like Robin could be on the verge of a mini heart attack. Mitch is soon caught by the authorities, but with a little power of persuasion, the jinxed jail guard, Neil Cooper (Greg Tannohill) who initially helped him escape the first time gets a second chance to escape but under one condition that he will be given a cut on the price of the $500,000 diamond. Throughout the rail on the bank, Mitch, Caprice, Sam, Neil and another jail guard have to battle through a gargantuan amount of laser beams and at some point in this part, Neil ends up losing his life in a rather lethal shredder. However, Mitch finally gets his hands on the diamond and at the finale, Mitch and Caprice make a dash for it and escapes in a car, alternatively, Mitch accidentally drives the car off the cliff and it appears that Mitch and Caprice have fallen to their deaths in a hilarious way. Lewis, Sayer and Shields’ narrative is premium as they have cleverly incorporated an array of parodies from action movies  into a plot that is jammed full of diverting dialogue and the representation of how a hijacker endeavours to steal what they want and the betrayal of children to their parents and vice versa.

One found the performances by the company of, ‘The Comedy About a Bank Robbery’ was first-class as they have brought the high powered energy from switched characters such as; Chris Leask who plays the other lesser parts and the American accents were enunciated to precision and ease, moreover, the fight and stunt sequences which has been directed by fight director, Johnathan Waller and stunt consultant, Alex Frith of which were executed with such fluidly. Henry Shields is delightful as lead protagonist, Mitch Ruscitti; eminently how we see that his power of coaxing can be done with such straightforwardness with stupid jail guards, as well as, the scenes with Caprice conveys their comedic and strange relationship as he’s quite a villainous character and she’s the daughter of a bank manager. Charlie Russell is great as Mitch’s ex-girlfriend, Caprice Freeboys; conspicuously how surprising to see that she is going to be a part of Mitch’s plan to rip-off the $500,000 diamond in her own father’s bank, furthermore, we can see that she uses her looks to obtain male attention and with her countless love interests you can obviously see that she’s not a pleasant person whatsoever. 

Mark Bell’s direction is incredibly outstanding here as he has been able to stage a production that is critically splendid as the myriad of elements that change rapidly through Mitch’s strategy of kleptomaniacal the $500,000 diamond, in addition to this, the actual clowning aspects of the performance have been acted by fantastic and all-inclusive characterisations and the audience reaction does show its success. David Farley’s set design and Roberto Surace’s costume designs were comically stimulating as you can tell that the set and costumes are supposed to emulate the fun factor and the scenic elements were constructed and painted in the way in which the show is supposed to flow and that is to amuse and entertain people in a bank robbery scenario. Overall, the experience of, ‘The Comedy About a Bank Robbery’ was a stellar show and another stonker of a production from Mischief Theatre so they have two hit shows under their belt, let’s hope there will be another one and make it a hat-trick. Fingers crossed.