Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Will Adamsdale, Brian Logan, Lloyd Hutchinson.

Ever feel that the Cosmos is having a huge laugh at your expense, that despite your best efforts and sincerity in making a difference in the world, eventually you will find out to the annoyance of your sanity that The Joke has been always on you. In a world of stereotypes, of labels and typecast ideas, The Joke is always one that become stale and flat; unless you have the genius of Will Adamsdale and his fellow actors on stage giving it the absolute sparkle needed to make 80 minutes become inventive, novel and wonderfully unsullied.

Will Adamsdale, Brian Logan and Lloyd Hutchinson are trapped in a joke, they cannot get out and from the start of the play the audience are able to recognise the lone voice in the dark, that sits in the mind whispering, what exactly are we doing here.

In the guise of the established scenario of An Englishman, a Scotsman and an Irishman, the three person short comic story which normally casts one of the party in the mode of the butt of the amusing gag, the three men on stage rip apart national stereotypes whilst simultaneously playing into the hands of such well honoured traditions; it is in that genius, in that subtly of twist that makes The Joke more of a prank upon themselves, that despite every possible exploration of finding a way out of the game played by the Cosmos, the story will always unfold out with a sense of determined tease.

There is always an explosion of wit and well timed thought when Will Adamsdale comes to the Unity Theatre, with the addition of Brian Logan and Lloyd Hutchinson to the forefront of the 80 minute exploration into the psyche of those to whom The Joke has ensnared in its midst, the evening was one in which, despite it being one of those nights in which there was something going on everywhere you could possibly look in Liverpool, captivated the Unity audience and added that undeniable release of tension hanging in the air when someone starts to kick stereotyping into the long and absurd grass.

A very, very good evening of comedic cool, a play of endeavour and well observed humour; a delight as ever from Will Adamsdale and his fellow actors!

Ian D. Hall