The Complete History of Comedy (abridged).

The interesting concept of the play was, as the name implied, a journey through history looking at how our style of comedy evolved from the Ancient Greeks, such as Plato, to what it is today. Obviously, it had to be abridged for such a long period of time but references were made to many of our present day news attracting people – mainly politicians. I am sure that many of the references to famous, or infamous, people of the past lost some effect as they were not known to many. We followed the development through the many chapters of the history – thirteen I think – with keen attention and many laughs along the way.

The Directors have used their cast of four to the utmost with set and costumes well designed for free-flowing action. The subtle costume changes and unusual entrances and exits from various scenes flowed well without distraction for the audience. However, the overall comedic effects were weakened in many ways by the never changing frenetic pace for much of the production. More variations in speed of delivery, volume and pausing would have lifted this production to a higher plane.

The cast – Willem Whitfield, Ben Kasper, Stephen Snape and Liam Hartley – inter-reacted very well while bouncing off each other. They brought raucous laughter from the audience at times. However, there were occasions when what was meant to be humorous was not so because of the delivery. I am sure they all worked hard but more subtlety will enhance the over-all effect.

This was a difficult play in many ways but I am sure it will be fine tuned so I would laugh even more.

William Davies