Everybody’s hot for Mischief’s new action-packed thriller THE COMEDY ABOUT SPIES, gripping audiences with laughter from April 2025 at the Noël Coward Theatre. The multi award-winning team behind The Play That Goes Wrong and The Comedy About a Bank Robbery step into 1960s London in this hilarious spy caper full of misunderstanding, miscommunication, and mistaken identity.
A rogue British agent steals plans for a top-secret new weapon. Spies from the CIA and the KGB assemble at London’s Piccadilly Hotel to track down the British mole and obtain the file. When a young British couple and an older actor auditioning for the title role in the first James Bond film check into the hotel, the stakes reach boiling point in this riotous world of Cold War farce.
__Assisted Performances:__
Audio Described - 6 June, 7:30pm
Captioned - 15 August, 2:30pm
BSL - 22 June, 2:30pm
Mischief’s work is inspired by Michael Frayn’s masterpiece Noises Off and the rising farcical stakes of the first act bear a resemblance. But although this comedy is neatly plotted – with all balls thrown in the air eventually retrieved – there’s more going round in circles than cleverly building towards a comedic crescendo. How well you get on with it will depend on your humour, but loyal fans of the company won’t be disappointed. It’s pure escapism: it doesn’t make you think and you’ll see the jokes coming before they land. If that’s what you need, then this gaggle of spies and their luckless path-crossers will keep you entertained.
Lewis, who played the pompous mentalist in Mind Mangler — Mischief’s send-up of the magician’s trade — steals scene after scene as Douglas Woodbead, a monumentally self-satisfied thespian who arrives at a fancy West End hotel to prepare for an audition for the first Bond film. Although his recent credits do not amount to much more than appearing in a haemorrhoids commercial, he is confident of getting the role ahead of some Scottish upstart called “Sean”. Little does he know that he is about to be entangled with American and Soviet secret agents who have converged on the premises in pursuit of plans for a secret weapon.
| 2025 | West End |
West End |
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