Pandemonium (Iannucci/Marber) - Soho Theatre

I'd booked to see it last Saturday evening but due to the ASLEF overtime ban the last train home on my route was well before the show was even due to start, so I couldn't go. Having booked this over 6 months beforehand I was very fed up but the whole run is sold out so no chance of an exchange.

Ha, so did we. Broadly agree. The funniest moment for us was when it all went a bit wrong and a player broke a piece of the stage but went with it - nearly hitting an audience member as he chucked it off the stage. More than a moment needed for everyone to pull it back together and keep going.

Loved this tonight. Really funny! An absolute hoot!

Boris Johnson's reign milked for laughs in a Faustian satire that is very very silly in a Pythonesque way, with lots of adapted Shakespeare quotes.

Amalia Vitale is a laugh riot as Matt Hemlock and Less Trust!

I probably wouldn't have gone if someone close to me had died in the pandemic though, as I suspect it would have been too soon.

Some spoilers follow. . .

Don't expect great mimicry. Only Paul Chahidi puts any effort into actually mimicking the voice of his principal character, Orbis Rex (the would be "World King," Boris Johnson), and he only mimicks about 25 percent of Boris's cadences, unlike say, Will Barton, in the "Last Temptation of Boris Johnson" at Park Theatre, who was all-round brilliant at mimicry.

Nonetheless, Chahidi's performance is an absolute triumph of puffed up buffoonery, and with the blonde wig, you completely accept him as a cartoon version of Johnson regardless.

This is broad comedy, and doesn't dig too deep, and is funnier for it.

This show feels Faustian cos it's half verse, and is a temptation story with the risk of damnation for all in Orbis's orbit, including the man himself, though he maintains he's a "god" of sorts.

It feels like Monty Python because it's the kind of show where Matt Hancock (aka Hemlock) goes on a redemption (aka TikTok) tour in a green elf onesie, only to receive varied, severe, high pitched curse words from "villagers" who've lost their families! The greater the pause, the more cathartic the curse, the bigger the laugh!

As Matt Hemlock, Amalia Vitale is so funny, channeling a blank indomitable Baldrick-like dumbness (compared to his boss, Chahidi's Johnson's Blackadder-like evasiveness) that just begs to be punched in the face repeatedly. And she is just as funny as the even dumber, even more blank-faced and arrogant Less Trust, who crumbles jelly-like when challenged.

Debra Gillett is almost as hilarious as Vitale, and she gets to do the funny Pythonesque voices, the kind of warbling ones Terry Jones might have done if he was still with us.

All in all, this is a very funny broad comedy, with a universally loveable unified and small ensemble, displaying a touch of intelligence, but the main thrust of which is to illustrate the shameless preening arrogance, of our "betters," and bash it hard on the head again and again and again lol.

4 stars from me.