Review by: Paul Towers, 09 March 2018
The Foundry Group production
Written by Philip Reeves and Brian Mitchell, starring
Murray Simon, Amy Sutton, David Mounfield & Brian Mitchell
Upstairs @ The Western, 9 & 10th March
2018
“an evening of inspired lunacy and improbable madness.”
The Foundry Group are very welcome regular visitors to
Upstairs at The Western and this is their fourth visit.
The Ministry of Biscuits was first performed 20 years ago by
Nicholas Quirke and others. However, Foundry Group got hold of it and Brian
Mitchell rewrote it to accommodate their special gifts of musical and physical
comedy. The result is an evening of inspired lunacy and improbable madness.
The show opens with a satirical parody of one of those 1950’s
Government information films so beloved of Harry Enfield patchily projected
onto a screen. This sets the mood and puts us firmly in the realm of the
Ministry of Biscuits, a Government department created to maintain the banality
of unadorned biscuits. Enter one Cedric Hobson,a young creative mind determined
to drag the biscuit world kicking and screaming into chocolate covered,
tastebud overloaded scrumptiousness. To this end he invents the triple
chocolate coated ginger cream surprise. This is the crack cocaine of biscuits and
the Ministry is determined to stamp it out.
Murray Simon’s creative Cedric Hobson, very like a David
Tomlinson or Ian Carmichael in his innocence, is the perfect foil for Brian
Mitchell’s Minister, a blustering Raymond Huntley or Arthur Lowe. Filling in
the gaps are Amy Sutton and David Mounfield with various other characters.
This brought to mind a Two Ronnies serial; improbably
storylines, outrageous characters and all done with straight faces. Huge fun.
This show is filled with original songs and some nifty
dancing; and there is nothing funnier than a fat man tripping the light
fantastic across the stage!
This performance was only the second date of their tour and,
inevitably, things went awry. But such is the professionalism of the company
that they embraced the mistakes which just added to the hilarity.
The Ministry of Biscuits is on again on Saturday 10 March. A
few tickets are left and are available at Upstairs at The Western’s website
Full details of the nationwide tour can be found at www.foundrygroup.co.uk
Upstairs at The Western http://upstairsatthewestern.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment