Colomendy holiday camp is the stuff of legend and
many a ghost story, and Nicky Allt has added another creepy tale to its
apocryphal history in his latest comedy offering for the Royal Court.
But his quintet of ill-fated explorers begin their story in
the more urban surroundings of B&Q at Speke. Brian, Big H, Barry and Stan
grew up together at St Malachy’s Primary and, as their lives veer into a murky grey
area approaching retirement, they have found refuge working in the garden
department of the store. Times are hard though, and with the store under threat
of closure (the producers are keen to point out that there is no truth in this
bit!) a new departmental manager has been brought on board to knock things into
shape.
Parachuted in from Wickes, Helen is a new broom determined
to sweep clean, but she is blindsided when she discovers that Barry is an old
flame who’s going through a marital a crisis. In fact all four of her team are cracking
up in one way or another, so she decides that a team building exercise is what
they need to lift their spirits and get things back on track.
A hike to the summit of Moel Famau seems like a plan – what could
possibly go wrong? And so the fearless five get the bus to their base camp at
Colomendy. On arrival, the dorms seem spookily unchanged, and as they settle
down for the night the old stories begin to be told in the half-light.
By the time they set off up the hill (which could be
Kilimanjaro for all the fuss they make) their heads are full of thoughts of ravaging
monsters and marauding locals, and it only takes a heavy mist to sweep in to
strike terror into them all. Will they make it back to Colomendy in one piece?
Will they save the name of the team and keep their jobs? And will Barry
successfully demonstrate his survival skills? All may or may not become clear
as they head toward the summit and Jubilee Tower.
Allt has struck a perfect balance with this script, and the comedy
is constructed with enormous skill. In the grand old tradition of this type of theatre,
pages of dialogue build to a single one-liner or a side-splitting moment of
farce. You can feel them coming but they still creep up and take you unawares.
Director Paul Goetzee (familiar to Studio audiences and making his main-stage
debut here) builds the pace with precision, and everything is timed
immaculately.
Jane Hogarth is Helen, and takes on the task of keeping the
men in check with an iron fist in a velvet glove. Paul Duckworth, John Evans,
Alan Stocks and Liam Tobin are all familiar faces on this stage and the
chemistry between them is almost as legendary as Colomendy itself. This is
supposed to be a gang of old mates stuck up a foggy, wet hill, and it really
feels like it. They’re at each other’s throats one minute and looking out for
each other the next. The wonderful thing is that they also manage to slip in
some serious thoughts about the problems of a waning middle-age, without ever
getting maudlin about it.
Special mention must go to Alfie Heywood for his trio of
sets. Like Goetzee, he is working on the Royal Court’s main stage for the first
time, and he has triumphed over the complexities of fitting a superstore, a dormitory
and a Welsh hillside together onto the revolve. If, like me, you’re in any way
geeky about stage movement your mind will boggle with the convoluted series of
interconnecting entrances and exits that Heywood has created for the cast to
play with.
Lost in Colomendy is a wonderful mixture of farce, nostalgia
and homespun philosophy, it’s laugh-out-loud funny and it’s probably one of the
best comedies on this stage for quite some time.
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| Alan Stcks, Liam Tobin, John Evans and Paul Duckworth - Photo (c) Jason Roberts |
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| John Evans, Liam Tobin, Alan Stocks and Jane Hogarth - Photo (c) Jason Roberts |
Star Rating: Five Stars
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