If you need pre-Christmas cheer look no further than this welcome reboot of Spymonkey’s Cooped. Leave reality behind for 80 minutes and plunge into a madcap universe of slapstick, silliness and low-flying toupees.
This playlet takes place in a secluded gothic pile where debonair posho Forbes Murdston (Toby Park) employs haunted dolly bird Laura Du Lay (Petra Massey) to help him unearth his dark past. Stephan Kreiss, who was so good in their Moby Dick at the Lyric, is creepy, gurning butler Klaus, while Aitor Basauri’s wigged-out solicitor Roger Parchment could be a long-lost Peter Sellers character.
With barely a pause for breath these consummate farceurs get stuck in. Du Lay is tossed around Lucy Bradridge’s inventive prop-laden set, where no one enters by a door when a window will do. Director Cal McCrystal, who created this with the ensemble in 2001, oversaw the physical comedy in One Man, Two Guvnors and his knockabout sensibility is foregrounded here, particularly in two surreal sequences, one involving kung fu, the other involving hassidic Jews evoking the anarchic violence of the Marx brothers.
For those who like their clowning with an undertow of sexual tension this a treat. Add nudity, motorised birds and even some plot and you have an enjoyable panto of the perverse. Not for children or the politically pious but for sheer leave-your-conscience-at-home escapist fun, Cooped is hard to beat.
Until tomorrow (0844 873 3433, leicestersquaretheatre.com)
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