The Three Musketeers by John Nicholson and Le Navet Bete is currently playing at The Lace Market Theatre in Nottingham city centre. The director forewarned me that this not a play to be taken as a serious adaptation of Dumas’ classic stories of daring do with rapid swordplay, flashing wit and swishing tunics. You can leave those pretensions at the theatre door. This is theatre for those who like silliness and parody and bouncing space hoppers and girls in false moustaches. Phwoar.
This is a fast paced comedy festival where sword fighting is imagined with an on stage sound effect created by the stressed stage manager (the hilarious Emma Carlton) as she clanks together two metal ladles to reproduce moments of frantic fencing. Then out of the blue the musketeers gallop around the stage on a space hopper, a hobby horse and a mini tricycle. The surprise of their daft entrance creates just one of the big belly laughs of the evening.
The show is tightly directed with plenty of comic creativity by Matthew Huntbach and one can imagine that lots of inventive fun took place during rehearsals alongside the hard work.
Comedy is a hard thing to pull off successfully and this team of actors, Ian Currie (D’Artagnan), Tom Pluse (Athos), Tilda Stickley (Porthos) and Charlotte Carter (Aramis) do well to keep up the madcap humour as they story tell and morph into thirty-five other wacky characters. Often with a rapid change of clothes or just making us use our imaginative powers as an audience. There is some audience participation and those at the front get to throw plastic ducks at the actors out on a duck shoot. Exposing any more of the many barmy goings on would be entering spoiler city. The photos by Grace Eden give a great visual flavour of this fruit loop piece of comedy theatre.
Photos by Grace Eden
This review is written on the fourth night of the production, a notorious point especially in amateur theatre, where energies can dip and voices become briefly inaudible. This is case on a couple of occasions tonight. Funny accents can get in the way in such matters. Generally though, the rush of the playing focusses everything back in line and it becomes a subtle learning curve. I know this too well from my days when I used to act.
If you like your comedy colourful, bonkers and bordering on Monty Python irreverence with a touch of the panto then you will very probably love The Three Musketeers – a comedy adventure. It’s a hoot.
Running at The Lace Market Theatre until Saturday 31st of May.
