Reviews

Wit Incorporated is turning into the little theatre company that could with their latest production. British playwright Alice Birch created Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again as a commission for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2014. She was given the prompt, “well-behaved women seldom make history”. From this flowed the confronting, hilarious and thought-provoking play which has now been staged by Wit and directed by Emily O’Brien Brown.

Cash on Delivery is a typical British farce of its time. It’s fast, funny – and based on a scam that is not as improbable today as it might have been in 1996 when the play was first produced. Why? Its protagonist, Eric Swan, is a con artist who has been defrauding the government by claiming multiple welfare benefits for some years. Sound familiar?

But, as is right, the authorities are on to him! An investigator arrives – and as Eric tries to escape through a seemingly bottomless rabbit hole, chaos ensues.

The Mousetrap holds the record for the longest running professional play in England at over seventy years with a small COVID break. Here is a chance to see a good production in our own back yard. The play is set in a mansion house that the relatively new owners decided to rent on room-by-room basis. At the start there are five guests, unknown to each other and the owners but they seem relatively normal. Then how can you tell. When we learn that house is snowed in and there has been a recent murder in the relative region, the focus on the various characters intensified.

We’ve all been in social situations which slide out of control – but never one so enjoyable (and uncomfortable) to watch as this scathing, hilarious play.  Not that the show is about Abigail’s Party, which is being held noisily down the street from our scene. This is Beverly’s domain, a slice of 1970s suburbia over which she reigns like a queen, hosting her neighbours for drinks and nibbles. It’s the gathering from hell – but this damnation is burning with truth and laughter.