IT’S comforting in a duvet day sort of way that this brand of humour can still raise a laugh.
After all that has happened to reshape the British funny bone over the last six decades, it’s quite amazing that this end-of-pier stuff remains perennially popular.
But it most assuredly does, and although this farce by Peter Gordon takes a little time to get into the swing, the piece soon finds its feet.
The undoubted star of this Agatha Christie murder mystery spoof is David Callister as Inspector Pratt, a predictably incompetent buffoon who spectacularly fails to understand a single thing that is going on.
His confusion is made all the more laughable by his complete ignorance of the English language, the malapropisms pouring forth with every idiotic utterance.
Adding to the general hilarity is his penchant for accidents, the decanter-spilling opening scene heralding the start to how he most certainly intends to carry on.
Former Hi-De-Hi star Jeffrey Holland is always an asset to any comedy and he certainly delivers the goods with his Colonel Craddock, a blustering stereotype that was nonetheless supremely entertaining.
More laughs came in abundance thanks to posh frock performances from Judy Buxton, Michelle Morris and Liz Garland. David Janson also stoked up the fun and frolics, although his Adolf Hitler routine sadly plummeted out of the sky like a crippled Battle of Britain Stuka.
This was above all a very British chunk of madcap and mayhem, a worthy successor to the fabled 1950s Whitehall farces that somehow never seem to go out of fashion.
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