Review: Out of Order, Shambles Theatre

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Britain's Ray Cooney's a farce writer first-class, the Shambles cast performing his hit show Out of Order make a first cast delivery of the farcical antics his script demands.

This show's seriously funny. An oxymoron? Of course, but so too is virtually every word Cooney's written.

Comic contradiction piles upon comic contradiction in a plot with a multiplicity of twists and turns that Sherlock Holmes would be hard-pressed to unravel.

To repeat the plot would be a disservice to future audiences, suffice to say a silly ass cabinet minister (Ron Cane) gets up to hi-jinks with the opposition leader's secretary (Alison Young) in the aptly-named Westminster Hotel.

A body's discovered, from there on in characters cavort on and off stage with bewildering speed and confusion.

To rank one above the other would be blatantly unfair, each has the audience in stitches with their fast-paced delivery and immaculate timing.

Hardly off stage, Cane's brilliant; so too is Steve English playing his hapless parliamentary private secretary, George Pidgen.

As waiter "Oliver Cromwell" who'll do anything just as long as his palm's greased with silver, Marc Spijkerbosch's facial expressions are elasticised.

Tim Eardly's angst as Young's cheated-on husband is comic drama at its best.

The sole straight man (as in stooge) hotel manager, Paul Van Miet's, convincingly harried.

Diane Pasco (Willey's wife Pamela) and Robyn-Ann Rumney's Nurse Foster are straight-laced conventionalists, that's until the normally timid Pidgen's touch turns them into writhing sex bombs.

Sarah Smith, the non English-speaking maid, still manages to be funny.

Fun is what director Jenny Hotch has delivered; it would be out of order not to see this wickedly funny romp.

WHAT: Out of Order
WHERE: Shambles Theatre
WHEN: October 9-24