Review: GAME NIGHT at The Hen and Chickens Theatre 18 – 22 January 2022

‘High velocity and hilarious, GAME NIGHT cleverly juggles seven characters without dropping a single one. ’ ★★★★★

Michael is getting engaged to Jacob and he has invited all his friends to a game night with the intention of announcing the good news. However, Jacob has invited a couple of mystery guests and things go badly awry.  Eight players and a very basic set (and some well thought out costumes) are all that is needed to make this play a winner with audiences. 

Not so long ago, it was rumoured that ‘farce’ was dead. It was just too hard to perform, and it wasn’t funny anymore. That is probably because old and tired shows were being hoicked around the circuit well beyond their sell-by date. GAME NIGHT is the updated bang-on-trend version and I promise that it’s high velocity and hilarious.  It is not too far away from the extremely successful show THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG (with many spin offs being televised). It is everything anyone might expect from the party that goes wrong; it is alcohol fuelled, sexually explosive with plenty of embarrassing situations and misunderstandings. 

Also, to its credit, the characters in GAME NIGHT are really well developed, apart from the one-dimensional Shane, who appears to be there because he looks good, and all the other characters find him sexually attractive.  Ideally GAME NIGHT would become a series of plays with the back stories of the other characters. Or maybe we could meet them all again, ten years in the future.   Failing that, the show has all the makings of a great sitcom for the television.   

Adam Hannigan, writer and director of GAME NIGHT cleverly juggles seven characters without dropping a single one.  He also plays the role of Michael. The entire cast play their part with expertise but personal favourites include Hannigan as Michael; Northern Irish, quite camp and emotional making him a good foil for some of the other characters. I also enjoyed the flagrant body language of the couple played by Amelie Rose and Jimmy Jameson. Their couple’s tiff spiralled brilliantly out of control, and it was impossible to predict where it would all end; an outrageously side-splitting conclusion involving another excellent character played by Tiffany Robinson.

The production company, Ear to Ear, has the mission to spread laughter and celebrate the diversity of the LGBTQ+ community. GAME NIGHT also has H for heteronormative as sparring couple Kate and Tom seem pretty ‘normal’ to me.  There might be some latent attraction to the same sex (but that’s also ‘normal’ RIGHT?) There are no absolutes here, which is really refreshing.

The current run of GAME NIGHT is over, but the show might well be back due to popular demand.  

More please.

GAME NIGHT

Presented by Ear to Ear Productions

at The Hen and Chickens Theatre

18 – 22 January 2022

Keep in touch with the company https://eartoearproduction.wixsite.com/theatre

Twitter: @eartoearprod

Reviewer: Heather Jeffery is Editor of London Pub Theatres Magazine