Jack Absolute Flies Again (London) London Reviews and Tickets
Member Reviews (38)
See it if you're looking for a self-aware play that's truly laugh-out-loud funny, with rapid fire hysterical moments, starring a wonderful cast.
Don't see it if you're looking for anything beyond laughs. Play is overstuffed with gimmicks, puns, pratfalls, breaking of 4th wall etc. leaving it hollow.
See it if An entertaining night out
Don't see it if I found it fairly dated for all its a new adaptation, and didn't quite get all the laughs it needed to
See it if you want an evening of roaring laughter and brilliant gags- though some are perhaps a little obvious- delivered with suitable panache.
Don't see it if you’re easily offended by swearing or references to sex or if you want your humour with a dose of subtlety and nuance.
See it if you enjoy a clever playful comedy farce. Miscommunication, mistaken identity & frightfully spiffing mad over the top likeable characters.
Don't see it if you don’t enjoy comedy farce.
See it if love an old fashioned farce
Don't see it if you don't like British humour
See it if you enjoy classic British comedy & are already familiar with it's inspiration Sheridan's "The Rivals." It's a fun 1940s romp on the old play
Don't see it if you don't love tried & true, old-school, tongue-in-cheek humor. It stays true to it's Restoration-era comedy roots just with modern dialogue
See it if Slap stick humour
Don't see it if Swearing and ad libs
See it if Easy comedy. Lighthearted and enjoyable.
Don't see it if If you're looking for something serious.
Critic Reviews (10)
"It’s funny. It’s fine. We all need a chuckle at the moment. But ‘Jack Absolute Flies Again’ isn’t anything more than the sum of its laughs. "
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"This knowing mix of satire, filth, clowning, pastiche, wartime derring-do and romance absolutely hit my sweet spot. It won’t be to everyone’s taste, but not even the hardest heart could entirely resist its machine-gun barrage of humour."
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"This is the second consecutive show at the National to glance nostalgically back at a bygone Britain and present a sentimentalised picture. For me, at almost three hours on its final preview night, this comedy felt forced, unoriginal and drawn out."
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"There isn’t room to summarise all the complications of the plot. Suffice to say that Quentin delivers her fruity double entendres with aplomb, and even gets a chance to reveal her talent as a vaudevillean."
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"For the most part 'Jack Absolute Flies Again' is content to deal in comfortable nostalgia of the barrel-rolled hair and bomber-jacket variety, familiar wartime tropes given a sitcom sheen. It’s always relatively entertaining, often very funny indeed, but its frothiness becomes tiresome after a while and it’s more celebratory than interrogative of the time it’s portraying."
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"Mark Thompson’s design illustrates the production’s sweet spot: a technicolour combination of comic book and live action, Englishness as an aesthetic and a myth. 'Jack Absolute' is more content to cuddle up to that myth than to seriously challenge it, but as pure summer fizz, it goes down a treat."
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"The script has a self-consciously Boy’s Own ‘whizzo’ feel and drips with arch knowingness and nods to its own theatricality, which is amusing enough but prevents us from caring much about what happens to anyone."
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"The performances are uniformly (no pun intended) superb, and the company have an infectious joie-de-vivre. ... Although the pandemic delayed its premiere, 'Jack Absolute Flies Again' proves the perfect tonic to the miserable few years we have been through."
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