THE FIT PRINCE
There are times when chaos on a stage can tell of a lack of rehearsal, or skill or even talent, times when you sit there and wonder, oh why oh why? Then there are times where that chaos is at the very heart of the entertainment, think The Play That Goes Wrong, Noises Off, joyous madness, mayhem and merriment. I am delighted to say the Linus Karp and Joseph Martin’s delicious camp confection, The Fit Prince, is up there with the best. The clue of course comes in the very long subtitle (who gets switched on the square in the frosty castle the night before (insert public holiday here). Are you following this?
Martin and Karp take as their starting point a genre of film that, until the COVID lockdowns, I was blissfully unaware. Then in the wilderness of unseen entertainment I fell upon Hallmark movies, treacly sweet, unlikely yarns filled with silly plots, characters and… well almost anything you could jam into 90 minutes of video nonsense. Fairy tales for a modern age you might think, but on the whole lacking the fascination of a Grimm or an Andersen, no these were tooth-rottingly sweet and utterly vacuous (and dangerously addictive). The form gave rise to a work of comedic brilliance.
Presented by Awkward Productions & King’s Head Theatre Productions, in association with Daddy’s Money Karp and Martin have generated a form of silliness that shines bright in our sometimes gloomy world. The whole could all go so very wrong and there is a charmingly ramshackle sense to it all that masks the fact that the piece is in reality a rather slickly presented piece of theatre, proving once again, as Les Dawson did at the piano, to appear to not be very good you have to be very good indeed.
I need not recount the plot in its entirety, save to say that a very ordinary New York baker called Butcher (you may garner some of the silliness from that) and as a gay man he leans, should we say, to the butch side of the role. He becomes embroiled in a plot with the Prince of Swedonia, stay with it. The prince is titled, entitled and also gay but this time erring on camp, well perhaps a little more than just erring, were he a princess he would soon become queen.
The clever part about the whole is that the telling of the story requires a rather large cast, some of them appear on screens, pre-recorded and very slickly so, but the bulk of the characters are chosen from the audience, around fifteen in all, willing volunteers, this is after all Brighton & Hove, the city of show-offs, but none knowing what they have let themselves in for. And praise too for the stage manager who is embroiled in the whole.
Amazingly all this lunacy works, the laughs come freely, the craziness works and even what may or may not be genuine technical hiccups are covered with witty video interjections, these delivered by Kate Butch in the guise of Angela Merkel rather brilliantly. And in fact Kate Butch delivered an excellent opening set, very funny tale telling comedy and powerfully delivered songs. Highlights throughout, cameos for gay suitors, Angela Merkel, Michelle Obama and HRH the late Queen Elizabeth using very inappropriate language. There’s also a genius set of spoof songs from Swedonia’s pop sensation BAAB, think about it, so well conceived and arranged that it had the audience in stitches.
There we have it, actors on stage, on film, puppets, props of varying quality, improvisation, cheeky asides, sauciness, politics but above all comedy!
I laughed long and hard, I delighted in the subtle political jibes and I was impressed by the very smart way silliness can be brought to the stage. This is full on queer theatre at its very best.
Andrew Kay
29 June
The Old Market
Rating:
