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Picture
Caught in the Net
Lindisfarne
Dixon Studio at the Palace Theatre, Westcliff on Sea
11th April - 15th April 2017
​by Tom King

AS if the staff at Southend Hospital A&E were not under enough pressure already, they will now have to cope with a queue of theatregoers, this critic included, who have ruptured themselves while laughing too hard at Caught in the Net.

Caught is farce at its most brilliantly contrived. A late comic classic by Ray Cooney, world king of farce (and former Westcliff Palace theatre artistic director), it benefits from a particularly brilliant script, even by Cooney standards. There is another factor at play as well – the expertise in farce that has been built up over the years by Lindisfarne Players, and their regular director Steve McCartney.
​
The play is a sequel to Cooney's Run for Your Wife, one of the longest running and most commercially successful plays ever staged. The situation in the first play has not changed very much. London taxi-driver John Smith still maintains his bigamous relationship with two wives. The two women and the two households remain in blissful ignorance of one another's existence. John's feckless lodger Stanley is still an affable bum. The brilliant device of using one setting to represent both identical suburban households is also unchanged.

Everything in the bigamous set-up seems cosy and comfortable. Then the gods of farcical chaos come up trumps. John's son from one wife starts to date his daughter from household No 2. John's ever more desperate attempts to keep his two children apart, and hide his double-life, once again rope in the hapless Stanley. 

The ensuing battery of farcical situations includes voices off, fake identities, , imaginary deaths, people locked out, people locked in, loopy phone calls, characters in the wrong place at the right time and characters in the right place at the wrong time, a snorkel that is used in an unconventional way, and a colossally dirty old man on the rampage. To prove that Cooney, who first started to write farce in the 1950s, can move with the times, inventive use is also made of mobile phones, which in true Cooney tradition for inanimate objects, adopt a life of their own. There is never a dull moment. In fact, things move so fast that there is never a dull micro-second. Blink and you miss another gag.

So – great material. Here is the thing, however. Farce is an exceptionally difficult genre to stage. The logistical challenges of fast footwork, lightning cues, multiple props, and dozens of choreographed entrances and exits are obvious, at least when you stop to think about it.
Yet the real challenge for the actors is to take the crazy complications of their lives with immense seriousness. Only the audience find the situations funny. For the characters, words like desperation and despair are more appropriate. Oddly, the core driver of the action is love. John loves both his wives, and does not want them, or his children, to be destroyed by discovering his double life. The mad and sex-crazed old grand-dad is actually a victim of senile dementia. Sadness and loss, you realise, are never far from the surface.

The amateur Lindisfarne cast achieve this high-pressure juggling act with a skill that outclasses many professionals. The performances are flawless. Lindisfarne's players show seemingly effortless command of comedy, while giving real conviction to the lives of their stage characters.

The versatile Kevin Lehane, who always shines in comedy, grabs another badge of honour in the pivotal role of the woebegone John Smith. Carly Davison and Carol Hayes are both a joy as the two wives. Davison in particular proves a mistress of mugging. Nicholas Jacobs, as Stanley, builds up his performance into a tremendous, frenzied crescendo that threatens to topple him into total madness. In the midst of all this flair, Chris Linnat-Scott threatens to steal every scene in which he appears as Stanley's dirty-old-man dad. Jack Byrne and Laura Brailsford, as the independent-minded (and thoroughly sensible)teenage offspring, are both charming. Hopefully we will be seeing more of them in Lindisfarne productions.

As with all effective comedy, a key part of the pleasure consists in admiration for the theatrical skill with which it is delivered. You have to wonder at the hours of hard graft that mus have gone into making this production so deft. The sweat and blood pay off. Just check that any medical insurance you may have is up to date, before buying a ticket.
​
Caught in the Net
Palace Theatre (Dixon Studio), Westcliff
Nightly at 7.45 pm until Sat April 15, mat Sat 2.30pm
Box office: 01702 351135 www.southendtheatres.org.uk

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