Spymonkey's Cooped

Drams none laughing too much
Venue Pleasance Courtyard (33)
Address 60 The Pleasance
Reviewer Thelma Good

This melodrama played for laughs has an Avenger-like heroine (Petra Massey) in white boots and short skirt with matching pants. The pants are needed - she has a bit of trouble down below and a nasty habit of falling over all rigid. The romantic lead Mr Murdston (Toby Park) acts strangely at times and his bad breath comes and goes as he rattles round in his ancestral pile with only a Lurch-like butler (Stephan Kriess) for company. Then the detective (Aitor Basauri) arrives, and falls for the hot-panted blonde so he has to get into the Gothic mansion. And he does, time and time again, even when she's three floors up and the lurching butler has barred the door with a fireplace.

Full of marvellous slapstick and some absurdly funny scenes - watch out for the ballet sequence in the Garden of Eden where Cain and Abel seem to have got born before the Fall. Then there's the Russian Jews dream of the heroine, no she's not on something though you'll think you are as more and more extraordinary things happen on stage. By the end all is tied up neatly into the plot even the dinosaur and you settle back contentedly chuckling but Spymonkey have got one last big surprise!

This show is Edgar Allan Poe on speed and a great sequel to Stiff also on in Pleasance Two earlier in the day. Stiff on at 11:30 (12:40)until 27 August. Cooped at 19:25 (20:35) on until 27 August

© Thelma Good 22 August 2001