With a star-studded cast, and some performers multi-roling throughout, it has the potential to be a great show – but isn’t polished enough to sparkle like the aforementioned jewels. The main issue with the production is the script. The plot feels forgotten about at times, there is a lack of wittiness, and jokes are sometimes crass and crude, but in an entirely predictable way – the humour, unfortunately, feels tired very quickly.
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“the two hour running time (including interval) has about twenty minutes of story. The rest of this ‘heist’ is an excruciatingly unfunny exercise in making the audience feel slightly less resentful at having paid money for an experience akin to being tortured in the Tower of London”
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"That it works as well as it does at times is no mean feat, but, lacking a strong raison d’etre besides giving us a nibble of history and a few baubles of mirth, this interloper’s reign looks set to be short-lived and immemorable."
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“Murray and Giedroyc’s performances are funny because they are funny people. But those performances are not in service to any wider purpose, because there isn’t one here.”
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“Nye is attempting, it seems, to write a Restoration comedy, its language and humour accurate to the time. But Foley directs it like a contemporary farce. The two approaches are worlds apart, and the humour gets lost in the middle.”
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“What a mess. The stately music of Purcell pours from speakers before the curtain rises but decorum goes out of the window once Simon Nye’s woeful attempt at rekindling the spirit of Restoration comedy starts.”
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“It feels closer to panto or sitcom. However the pacing is far too sluggish, and the overreliance on knob gags gets tiresome. It’s also hard to figure out the tone: It’s generally quite cartoonish, but with sudden dashes of sex and violence.”
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“Comedy is hard to get right and it’s also wildly subjective... I always try to lean into a show, find the humour and gloss over the jokes that fall flat. But such generosity is hard to extend to a production that only succeeds when the story is left behind and the stage turns into a platform for proven West End performers to strut their stuff.”
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