Last Updated on May 22, 2025
Delightful new espionage farce with non-stop laughs
4.5 out of 5.0 starsMuppet-style chickens shot from the sky with an umbrella gun, hairdryers wielded as weapons, a giant vintage radio being wrestled over; The Comedy of Spies has non-stop visual gags fired off as fast as the jokes.
The Comedy About Spies is the latest production from Mischief, the company behind The Play That Goes Wrong. The ensemble cast performs a near-flawless frolic of misunderstandings and mistaken identities in the style of a 1960s London spy farce.
The premise is that a rogue agent accesses top-secret weapon plans, bringing together inept teams of spies from the CIA and KGB, an overbearing actor preparing for his James Bond audition, and a young couple on a romantic getaway. Against the backdrop of a Piccadilly hotel, slapstick and chaos rule as everyone plots to identify the turncoat and get their hands on the missing “Project Midnight” files.
As well as Mischief’s trademark skilled wordplay and physical comedy, there will be many familiar faces in The Comedy About Spies if you’ve seen works from the “Goes Wrong” stable. Most cast members have previously played in earlier Mischief productions such as The Play That Goes Wrong, The Goes Wrong Show (BBC) and The Comedy About A Bank Robbery.
Mischief co-writers Henry Lewis and Henry Shields are the lynchpins of the ensemble cast. Lewis is especially comic as Douglas Woodbead, the bumptious would-be Bond, who, despite his enthusiasm, is clearly unsuited to the 007 role.
Shields plays Bernard, an endearing but humdrum bakery executive, amusingly prone to barking out bread and cake terms, such as “oh crumpets!” as expletives. Bernard is determined to propose to his girlfriend Rosemary (Adele James, in her debut with Mischief), hence bringing her to the hotel where they get mistaken for spies.
Pompous Woodbead, a Russian disguised as a bell boy, and disaster-prone CIA agents, each foiling Bernard’s wooing of Rosemary, are pleasingly ludicrous. Four brightly painted rooms in a square take up most space during the first half, letting us watch bungled covert surveillance, tussles and squabbles between room occupants. This tightly orchestrated segment shows how well the Mischief company work together, the props, visual gags and comic timing in The Comedy About Spies are textbook perfect.
The whimsical Art Deco hotel set (by David Farley) is Wes Anderson meets a certain Torquay guesthouse. “Bombs” get thrown out of windows, people (and pigeons) hide in wardrobes, it’s pure farce. The cartoonish costumes, by Deborah Andrews, add to the kooky effect, especially when outfits clash vividly with backdrops. A conveyor belt floor, in the second half, literally keeps things moving, and the story eventually leaves the hotel for a chase scene on a train. This being London, it’s a tube carriage and a misty Thames embankment reminiscent of Mission Impossible.
The main cast in The Comedy About Spies are mostly all original Mischief Company members. Chris Leask (Theatre credit – Peter Pan Goes Wrong) is keen to please Russian spy Sergei, bizarrely obsessed with spleen ailments and telling everyone his unnecessary backstory. Charlie Russell (TV credit – And Then There Were None) is Elena, his long-suffering, slightly more competent KGB partner.
The CIA agent, Lance (Dave Hearn), is so out of his depth that his loudly judgemental American mom, Janet (Nancy Zamit), has gatecrashed the mission. She’s been a spy too, a much more experienced one than he, lest he forget, and is dying to turn this into a kill job. Completing the crew is Greg Tannahill as Albert the canary-clad hotel receptionist, who, whilst more peripheral to the storyline than the other couplings, has many funny moments throughout.
Every espionage cliché from code-worded rendezvous on park benches to smoke grenades gets employed. The joyous introduction at MI6 HQ, with characters code-named after alphabet letters (but markedly not M or Q), gets everyone roaring within seconds. A later fight scene is so much like Adam West era Batman that someone should hold up placards saying “bam!” and “kapow!”. The cast looks like they’re having as much fun as the audience.
After the immaculate first half, where non-stop hilarity pops between the cast, the second half of The Comedy About Spies doesn’t quite match the pace. Although it’s still very funny, by the last fifteen minutes, things start to ramble.
Some sequences of gags ought to be repeated fewer times before they get overplayed. Bernard’s double/triple/quadruple agent skit goes on too long, as does the lift shaft sequence. The mystery shopper thread is underutilised. The conclusion and some characters’ motives haven’t had enough groundwork; there’s scope for a Brangelina-style Mr and Mrs Smith revelation. Although after two hours of crazy mayhem, you’ve enough laughs in the bank to not mind too much. The reappearance of the Russians, from an unexpected submarine, ends everything with a satisfactory bang.
Fusing signature moments from Fawlty Towers with James Bond is going to be a sure-fire hit with theatre goers. A British audience is so literate in set-pieces involving silver serving domes and hotel service gone wrong, it’s already in our DNA to have these things tickle our funny bones. The Comedy About Spies has the crowd-pleasing formula necessary for West End success. Take your parents, take your kids, they’ll be shaken and stirred.
The Comedy About Spies runs from 13 May to 5 September 2025
Noel Coward Theatre
85-88 St Martin’s Lane,
London
WC2N 4AU
Check our previews for more 2025 West End Theatre suggestions
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