Recently a Russian Spy was poisoned inside the Princess Grace… Hospital. He had been working for an Oligarch who had uncovered a sinister government plot to clone perfectly obedient citizens. After kidnapping the prototype to this sinister scheme, a child named Earnest, he smuggled it out of Russia to London, where he was tragically poisoned by KGB agents (after they gave him a copy of the Daily Mail printed in poisoned ink), but not before stowing the child in a left luggage locker and swallowing the key. The only person who knows this is a jobbing actor who found himself sharing a ward with the secret agent after catching food poisoning off a meal cooked by his wife… who is also an agent for MI5… who are also after Earnest in order to bring order to the people of Hull... I’ve been told by the cast of Peepolykus’ adaptation of The Importance of Being Earnest to spread this message as widely as possible.

Confused? Good! It’s impossible to describe the delirious pleasure you feel as the genteel English façade of Wilde’s chamber play breaks down into a rip-roaring espionage farce. The cast, who have been delivering Wilde’s witticisms and quips with deliciously hammed up relish, suddenly whip off

their Victorian garb and announce that they are not really going to perform The Importance of Being Earnest (or TIOBE for short), but instead want to use the power of theatre to bring to the public’s attention a cover up that threatens British society at its very foundations. The rug is lifted up with the words: ‘Spyski: The Bloody Truth’ scrawled on its underside and suddenly we are in uncharted territory; anything could happen, and it frequently does. The play ends with a police helicopter knocking in the roof of the theatre and announcing to the audience that they have all been captured on CCTV and should leave with their hands up. Rarely is theatre this original, clever and downright hilarious.

The sheer inventiveness of the staging is mind boggling, with the small stage changing from a nineteenth century drawing room, to a hospital ward, to a shady government organisation or a Glenneagles celebrity golf tournament with a few fluidly executed and ingenious ideas. At one point, as a character describes to his agent the location of the hospital he has to infiltrate, we see projected onto the screen footage of a scale model town being shot on camcorder by one of the other characters stage left. At another point a filing cabinet being wheeled across the stage with clanging doors represents a train. The excellent small cast is headed up by Peepolykus founders John Nicholson and Javier Marzan, whose exaggerated Hispanic struggles with the English language are hilarious. They play a multitude of characters, dashing on and off stage and mixing elements of slapstick and physical theatre into their performances with aplomb. At one point the alert sounds that a spy is returning to the theatre and the actors scramble to redress the set, tripping over one another to get back into costume and ‘seamlessly’ return to Oscar Wilde and the feigned innocence of tea and cucumber sandwiches.

Peepolykus (People Like Us) have been making award winning comic romps for thirteen years and in Spyski (Sorry, The Importance of Being Earnest) they don’t so much as knock down the theatre’s forth wall of realism, as much as demolish the entire building and dance a deranged jig on the rubble. Before you dismiss this, ask yourself one thing: Are you a horse or a sheep?

Spyski: or the Importance of Being Earnest runs at the New Wolsey, Ipswich, until April 4th.

Words > Dean Bowman