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Monday, June 18, 2012

Review: The Vindictive Vice President (Fringe)


by Chris Lane
The Vindictive Vice President is a farce featuring the bumbling Detective Moarcock attempting to solve a murder case in Victorian (or something like that) London. The play starts off well with a funny scene in which a wealthy businessman calmly tries to reschedule his own death. Unfortunately, the play only goes downhill from there.
The program touts the play as being “the Pink Panther meets Monty Python,” but really it’s just trying to be as funny as them. There are some quite funny lines in there, and the cast is full of energy and very committed, but the jokes generally go too far, or are just plain ridiculous. Putting on a farce is difficult to do properly, and merely being outlandish doesn’t necessarily make it good comedy.
At least the cast was clearly enjoying themselves, but perhaps to the point of forgetting to make sure that it would be funny for the rest of us. While some of the audience members were laughing throughout the play, to me it seemed amateur and somewhat tiresome.
Rating:

2 comments:

  1. Couldn't disagree more with this review. Maybe it just wasn't your kind of humour, but I thought the play was hilarious, and the audience seems to agree, since they were all laughing throughout the whole thing!

    I love a good farce, and this play definitely fits the bill. Everyone should go see this if they want to be thoroughly entertained for an hour!

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