Run for Your Wife

Ray Cooney’s farce Run for Your Wife belongs in the trouser-dropping tradition of Carry On movies with lots of broad sexual innuendo and characters that include vacuous bimbos, bumbling police-officers and stereotypical gays.

Hapless taxi-driver John Smith has two wives, two flats, and a split-second timing schedule as he juggles both. It all unravels one night when he gets mugged and ends up in hospital. That’s the premise of this comedy that ran 9 years in the West End.

This well-oiled production is awash with Alan Younsten’s directorial flair which includes a good percentage of physical comedy business. There’s no doubt he knows his farce.

As the twice married protagonist, up-and-coming actor Tyler Harris gets progressively better each time I see him. His line readings are spot on, he knows how to get a laugh and his timing is great. John Bennetto and Laurie Webb are a couple of traditional plodding “plods,” Matthew Nisbet was broadly crass as the work-shy Wimbledon upstairs neighbour Stanley, Braydon Mengel played the other upstairs neighbour Bobby like a reject from Ru Paul’s Drag Race, whilst Natalie Pedler and Ciara Foley as the wives frequently look foolish and stupid which is what they’re required to do.

Tristen Holland’s set design and dressing (assisted by Margaret Bell) was perfect for the London borough settings down to the apt clothes stands and paintings on the wall.

The cast continually scrambled for laughs, not easy when the piece is long past its use-by-date, but the full-house thought it was the best thing since John Inman limp-wristed his way through Are You Being Served.

Peter Pinne