The Wyndham’s Theatre in London’s West End is home to the stage adaptation starring the show’s original stars Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith. Directed by Simosn Evans, the show is a fantastic night out for fans of the hit BBC show that it is based on.
As a fan of the BBC TV series Inside No. 9 I was so saddened when it would turn out that series 9 would be the last. Naturally this made sense that they would wrap it up with the fitting ninth series, but for fans of the show, we craved more. Fortunately, the story of Inside No. 9 hasn’t ended yet as the stars and creators of the show have returned to bring a stage adaptation of their hit anthology series to the Wyndham’s Theatre in London.
As a heads up, I will be discussing some elements of the show, so this is your spoiler warning, but I won’t go into absolute heavy spoilers. I have a separate article which is a deep dive of the show and explains the ending and things you may have missed. Feel free to check that out if you have seen the show.
I was desperate to get a ticket for this as soon as they became available, and having recently seen the show, I’m thrilled to say, it didn’t disappoint…Well maybe in a couple of very minor ways, but I’ll get into that, as that is what this review is for.
Looking at Act 1
When the show began it was so exciting to see the intro sequence from the show performed live and extended with two violinists and fun projections recreating the TV Show intro credit sequence.
Stage Fright does a great job of translating the anthology show nature of the TV show to stage. I did wonder if the show would be one continuous story, if it would be segmented, and it is the latter. There are around six stories told through it’s two acts, and these are all separate stories where the characters don’t cross over like how the characters don’t reoccur from one episode to another.
Watching the show actually reminded me of the format of The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror Halloween specials which have three separate unrelated segments. And yes, whilst I say unrelated, that isn’t entirely true.
In Inside No. 9 Stage Fright, the various stories are connected through an ongoing theme of ghosts in the theatre. I guess that is why the show is called Stage Fright. A play on words of an actor being scared on stage, and also the more literal meaning of ghosts in the theatre.
The show is every bit as clever as the TV show, with lots of layers of meaning and their famous twist endings to every story. This is all wrapped up in fun wordplay and slightly immature humour which the show is known for.
There’s a great sequence where they use projection on a near invisible screen that is in front of the stage to show text messages being sent. These are all from voice dictation and I think they found just about every way possible to have the voice dictation misheard and displayed as naughtier versions of the messages.
A moment like this was simple, but effective.
One of the things the TV programme is known for is the level of creativity throughout. Every episode has unique elements that are Pemberton and Shearsmith doing a different style or way of creating the episodes. This includes an episode being entire shot through a CCTV camera, one performed in verse, another as Commedia Del Arte which is a centuries old form of Italian theatre which was the genesis of modern clowning.
In Stage Fright, the creative team did a fine job to include different clever ideas around what could be achieved live on stage. This includes clever use of live projection, ghostly effects, songs and what is probably their most daring segment of the show where they include a different guest performer each show who has no idea what to do, and they have to improvise their way through the scene.
The show opens up with a scene set within the auditorium of a theatre and the cast play people watching a production of Hamlet. It’s not a dialogue heavy scene, but perfectly gives the audience what they would expect from Inside No. 9. That is some silly humour, over the top characters, and then a dark twist ending.
It is a relatively short segment that leads into Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith coming front of curtain to address the audience out of character. From here the duo more properly set up the premise that will continue throughout the rest of the show. That is stories and rumours of ghosts in the theatre. A lamp is scene in the background of several scenes which flickers when there are restless spirits.
The next segment will be familiar to fans of the TV show and is a near perfect recreation of one of the most well known episodes of the TV series, Bernie Clifton’s Dressing Room. In it Shearsmith and Pemberton play Tommy and Len, also known as the failed TV double act Cheese and Crackers who had minor success in the 1980s.
Truthfully, I was slightly disappointed when this segment began, as it gave me the concern that the show may just be a few original moments and then them just replaying the old hits. Fortunately that wasn’t the case, but even it the whole show had just been them recreating past episodes it would have still been a fantastic show. I guess I was just hoping for something new knowing that this is quite possibly the swansong and final time we’ll get new Inside No. 9 stories.
Learn to improvise with the books from Extreme Improv XStreamed
But as I said, the show was more than them just retelling old episodes, and the inclusion of Cheese and Crackers was done for a very specific reason of how it ties in to the theme of ghosts in the theatre.
A change to Bernie Clifton’s Dressing Room came in the scene within a scene moment where Tommy reads a script written by Len and then we see the script played out. In reality the script was just an excuse to segue to another scene, and this took us to the kidnapping scene.
The kidnapping scene was a callback to the episode A Quiet Night In, although was something of a prequel to that TV episode where we see the hapless criminals on a different criminal job. This was the segment that was semi improvised where they brought out a celebrity with a sack over their head to obscure who it is to get the big reveal in centre stage. On the night I saw the show the guest performer was Dara O Brien who I mainly know for Mock the Week, and there were lots of silly jokes that revolved around Dara and his past works.
This scene was fun, but truthfully it was probably my least favourite. I couldn’t decide if it was rehearsed or they were improvising, but somewhat settle on them trying to make us think it was more improvised than in fact it was.
After this interlude we cut back to Cheese and Crackers who finished off their story in much the same way that it happens on the TV episode it was based on. I may have to rewatch the episode, but felt that Shearsmith’s voice was a lot deeper and forced on stage than I remember the character being on the TV version, but maybe I’m misremembering.
By the interval, where we’d also had a couple of loud scream jump scares, I was feeling pretty good about the show. The humour was spot on, and I felt I understood why they had included the Cheese and Crackers scene to tie in with the ghost aspect of the show. With the kidnapping scene also being a callback to a previous episode, which itself included a very quick joke of Dara O Brien opening a closet to find it filled with people playing Sardines as the characters in the first episode of Series 1, I did suspect that the show was going to be a remix of old classics.
Fortunately Act 2 was pretty much entirely original and demonstrated that they did in fact have a mast plan. Shame on me for not trusting them throughout.
Diving Into Act 2
Unlike Act 1 which had four definite stories or segments (these being the theatre auditorium scene, Reece and Steve as themselves, Cheese and Crackers and the kidnappers) Act 2 was much more of a cohesive story from start to end…well almost end. And actually, the story of Act 2 kinda gets flipped on its head midway through. Let me explain.
Act 2 begins with what appears to be some kind of cheesy hammer horror style monster movie set in an asylum. We meet a woman visiting a doctor, and a slightly warped sister or matron. It was good to see the cast somewhat expanded in the second act as the first act had been primarily just Pemberton and Shearsmith, and whilst that is no bad thing, the TV show showed us they could have fantastic additional characters beyond just those played by the main stars.
We are soon introduced to Shearsmith who sings a song and then proceeds to behave as a scary doctor, before we get one of many twists throughout act 2. This is that he wasn’t really the doctor, and then we get the equally bad Pemberton as the actual evil doctor.
This whole story is then revealed to be a rehearsal of a play, and the show segues onto its next story. This was an interesting shift which called back to the TV episode featuring a séance where you could take the séance seriously until you realise its just performers acting in roles.
This means that nothing from the actual asylum story continues, but we do carry on with the actors who are playing the characters in the asylum story now as the central characters.
Primarily, the last major sequence of the show is about two female characters, and doesn’t focus on Shearsmith and Pemberton at all. This was an interesting choice, and certainly they put in more than their fair share of stage time in act 1. Still was a little unexpected, but I guess something of a callback to the early years of the TV show where they wouldn’t always both have leading roles in every episode themselves.
With the two female characters, who I believe were played by Miranda Hennessy and Gaby French if I recognised them correctly from the programme, they had the most ghostly story of the show. Using clever live projection, they had a tense scene in an otherwise fairly light (if sometimes dark and twisted) show.
This naturally led to another big twist, but then the ending sequence came. I’ve got a deep dive article where I fully explain the ending sequence and all the twists that you should check out, so will only discuss it briefly here.
As you’ll have seen, they go the route of revealing that a cast member had been a ghost the whole show, which is a slightly over done concept, but they even joke about it themselves. This leads us back to Pemberton and Shearsmith performing out of character as themselves for a fitting musical finale.
One criticism I have for the show is that I didn’t feel I could fully appreciate what they were trying to achieve until the ending leg of the show when all of the pieces started to fit together. By the ending I fully understood why they reused the whole of the Cheese and Crackers story and how in the context of Stage Fright there was several layers of extra meaning it to its inclusion.
I also felt like I wanted to see the show again immediately form the start to look for various clues and watch again with a now trained eye on everything they did and every line they said. But I guess that is part of the fun of Inside No. 9 and it’s attention to detail and twists.
In conclusion
I thought it was a great show and should this be the final Inside No. 9 story told it certainly does go out on a high. For casual theatre goers, I would perhaps recommend that you watch at least a few episodes of the TV show before using this as the jumping in point just so you can get used to the style of humour, and writing style and twists.
For fans of the show I’m sure everyone will be very satisfied with what they were able to create here. If they don’t make more TV stories, I also wouldn’t be against the idea of Inside No. 9 continuing as an anthology series on stage with a new production every couple of years. That would be an exciting prospect.
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