REVIEW: Cosmic Healing at Theatre at the Tabard 15 January – 1 February 2025

‘The joy is in the quite subtle character work inside a broad brush-stroke farce’ ★★★ ½ 

Panda la Terriere and her production company Curtain Twitchers &Co. have produced a stylish entertainment with its roots in the sort of sixties comedy that Britain produced by the bucketful: Spike Milligan, the Goons, N. F. Simpson, Monty Python. Farcical, existential, sardonic, and a bit silly. It’s a noble tradition, and their offering that filled the stage at Chiswick’s Tabard Theatre, COSMIC HEALING, is a worthy successor to that tradition. 

The story, for what it’s worth, concerns a disparate group of noughties cultural types, trying to regain whatever mojo they have lost in a yoga and mindfulness retreat in wet West Wales, under the watchful third eye of guru and failed stand-up comedian Paul John. There are rows, revelations, self-discoveries, and scandals. A Canadian investigative reporter is on the case, and the whole boiling pot is put in spin till the pieces fly off at the edges. 

It probably isn’t worthwhile getting hung up on the plot, which is really just a piece of ribbon tying a series of sketches and monologues and two-handers together. The joy is in the bits, the quite subtle character work inside a broad brush-stroke farce. There is a charming musical interlude played by Tullio Campanale, dropping out of his character as a loutish Glaswegian to play a funny and touching song of loss and longing. It’s that sort of show. There are plenty of surprises, most of them good ones, plenty of laughs, and it all proceeds at such a breakneck pace that there isn’t much time to contemplate a plot. 

Good entertainment, lots of nice bits, not much coherence, and a set that looks like a school panto, which may be deliberate. 

Follow the company on Instagram here: @curtaintwitcherstheatre.