Review: THE PAINKILLER, Garrick Theatre, March 17 2016

Each individual element of a farce is seldom funny per se - the slapstick dashing between rooms; the men with trousers down; the inopportune arrival of a character just in time to see something they shouldn't; the contrived misunderstandings - but, get the combination right and, well, you have Fawlty Towers.

The Painkiller (at the Garrick Theatre until 30 April) is no Fawlty Towers (despite sharing its hotel setting) but it is tremendously entertaining - once, as is the case with panto, you buy into farce's conventions. Freely adapted by Sean Foley from Francis Veber's 1969 comedy, Le Contrat, this version runs at a breathless all-through 90 minutes full of needles, nerds and naughtiness.

In a hotel that makes up in cushions what it lacks in service, suave assassin Ralph (Kenneth Branagh) is setting up his last hit, taking out a gangster arriving for trial at the court across the road. That plan is blown off course by the presence next door of Brian (Rob Brydon), a man driven to take his own life by his wife's leaving him for a psychiatrist. Brian is dull, but he really just wants to be loved and clings to Ralph so much that the killer is soon wrapped round a telephone wire with Brian's wife (Claudie Blakley), injected with horse tranquilliser by her doctor/lover (Alex MacQueen); fighting a policeman (Marcus Fraser) and feigning groin fondling in front of the porter (Mark Hadfield). There - I told you it was a farce!

It's all just about believable (maybe I could quibble about the soft ending, but that would be churlish) and there's never less than a tremendous energy driving the laughs on stage. Branagh (looking a lot like Eddie Izzard from halfway back in the stalls) is very good on gradually losing his cool dignity, before eventually discarding it altogether as the drugs kick in. I think I spotted little homages to Scooby Doo, the Ministry of Silly Walks and Michael Jackson in there too. Brydon is just about vulnerable and charming enough for us to believe that he was once married to glamourpuss Blakley and not killed instantly by the hitman he torments. It's quite a comic skill to make "boring" that funny!

There's good support for the big names from MacQueen, who has little in the way of bedside manners but has the aggression dialled up to 11 from the off and Hadfield, who is more trolley-dolly than porter, but provides a slice of British camp into a show that feels very French at times.

With Alice Power's set (two rooms mirroring each other divided by an imaginary wall) as good as a whole extra comic character, the production feels well up to West End production values even if you have time for a meal before or after the show. Just laugh along for the first ten minutes and you'll soon be laughing for the next eighty. That said, if you don't think a fifty-something man hopping up three stairs because his trousers are somehow round his ankles, only to get a door slam him on the conk when he gets there, is funny, that's fine - there's always Michael McIntyre.

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