Erect! Plenty of Gags at the Hen & Chickens

Important thing number one you should know about this play: do not type ‘erect’ into Google when trying to find out the relevant performance details. Important thing number two: it’s worth going to see.

The play revolves around Uma and Andrew (Gabby Best and Ioannis Balaskas), a once great man and wife architectural team gone bad. Having lost their passion for buildings, and each other, they now spend their time designing B&Q warehouses and torturing an endless supply of work experience students.

However, whilst working on their pitch for the new Iraqi parliament building they take on the seemingly meek and pliable Ben (Diarmid Thackery) as their newest plaything, and he becomes involved in a lot more than just making the tea.

Written by its out and out star, Ioannis Balaskas, the dialogue is genuinely laugh-out-loud funny, but one does get the distinct feeling when watching Balaskas that he thinks so perhaps more than anyone. A couple of his jokes go on just that little bit too long, and one can’t help at times feeling like the supporting characters aren’t really characters at all, just mere props for Balaskas to use in the setting up of his next gag.

But having said all that, his gags are, self-indulgence aside, very very good. There are some fantastic one-liners here, the bitch-fights between Uma and Andrew are top-notch and the script is littered with hilariously lewd and crude monikers that even I’ve never heard before.

The cast, however, was not as solid as the script – two of them were physically shaking, something you just can’t hide in a space as intimate as the Hen & Chickens. And this colossal lack of confidence probably let down Gabby Best most of all, as it’s pretty hard to pull off a conniving femme fatale without oozing buckets of sickly self-confidence. I just hope that these wobbles can be pinned on opening night nerves, and that as the run continues, the actors start to do this fantastic script the justice it deserves.

As a piece of writing, Erect! is incredibly good. As a production, it doesn’t score quite so highly but is a hell of a lot better than most above-a-pub comedies, and is still definitely worth going to see.

Erect!
By Ioannis Balaskas

The Hen & Chickens Theatre
19 August – 6 September
Tuesday to Friday 7.30pm
Saturday 2.30pm & 7.30pm

Tickets £12/£10 concessions, Saturday matinees £10/£8 concessions
www.henandchickens.com