Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Will Adamsdale, Lyndsey Turner, Jason Barnett, Chris Branch, Matthew Steer, Melanie Wilson.
The thinkers guide to writing procrastination, or rather how to give an audience that one special night where everything comes together, comedy, drama, talking fridges and builders who belittle your confidence with their knowledge of art. Everything that can ever go right and wrong in the course of a week whilst your girlfriend is away is explored to its absolute best by Will Adamsdale in the superb and captivating comedy, The Victorian in the Wall.
When sometime writer Guy, he once won a short story award and as the fridge likes to remind the audience it was a number of years ago, finds out that his girlfriend, portrayed by the incredible Melanie Wilson, has to go to Denmark as part of her job for a week, the manly panic sets in, what is he to do aside from open the door and let the builder in. Certainly she left no instructions on how to deal with finding the long lost Mr. Elms bricked up behind one of the false walls nor how did she tell him that at some point this man might be the best thing that had happened to Guy in a long, long time.
That is also true of Mr Elms, the patient man who loves collecting cigarette cards and smoking his pipe whilst wishing he could be part of the ballroom singer who lives above him and who he has come to adore. Both stories intermingle and entwine to great effect and with the greatest array of props seen perhaps on the Unity stage, this wasn’t just a play, it was an experience that bought the house down.
The Victorian in the Wall contained a set of performances that reached new levels of sublime ability, making the small additions, whether through the songs or additional superb sound effects that raised the bar or just the fact that the narrative was so outright enjoyable, completely and utterly bonkers and yet so beautiful and so compelling, a play that you dare not blink during as you will miss a moment of genius. Will Adamsdale and his team are a godsend to comedy theatre.
Ian D. Hall