Review: POLICE COPS THE MUSICAL, New Diorama Theatre
The Police Cops ensemble are back to throw lots and lots of gags at the wall, some that hit and some that miss
By: Gary Naylor Dec. 01, 2021
What do you get if you stir in a soupçon of the Naked Gun franchise's spoofing, a healthy gobbet of The Play That Goes Wrong's energy and more chest hair than you'd see at a Burt Reynolds lookalikes convention? Something like Police Cops The Musical, the latest from a company which applies its formula to different genres.
Over a two hours plus running time (too long for a quickfire, sketchy show like this, especially with a delayed start and a long interval) so many jokes are thrown at the wall that some are bound to hit and some miss - but, it must be said, more hit in this show than in most others. So much comedy is a matter of subjective taste though, so while your reviewer found the gigantic Nutcracker doll's head hilarious (yes, and in Mexico to boot), a mop motif flogged the deadest of dead horses for far too long.
There's the flimsiest of plots on which to hang the madcap fun involving a (wouldn't you know it) idealistic young cop and his cynical old partner, a drugs warlord, a ex-chief of police with the aforementioned mop fetish and a doomed kid sister. Not that it matters much, as the plot merely provides a set of starting points for gags, puns, pastiches, pratfalls, ad libs, costume changes and many, many opportunities to remove clothing (the boys, not the girls).
The ensemble, Zachary Hunt, Tom Roe, Miztli Rose Neville, Andrea Nodroum & Nathan Parkinson, work very hard, with Nodroum and Neville displaying particularly fine singing voices in musical interludes that appear to be included because, well, why not? But the show is too long, the lack of any coherent narrative telling in sequences that probably work better as standalone sketches rather than shoehorned into a story that might sustain an hour, but has run out of steam long before the end.
The venue doesn't do the show any favours, as one feels that a boozier house not sitting in regimented rows and probably clutching pints would make for a better response. That said, not many comedies succeed as much as does this one - few even try - an it feels good to hear communal laughter ring round a space again after too long without it.
Police Cops The Musical is at the New Diorama Theatre until 23 December
Photo Alex Brenner
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