Lots of laughs with Out of Order at Richmond Theatre

Not everything that I see at the theatre is experimental, challenging or intellectual. Some of it is just fun. And that is exactly what I was hoping from from Ray Cooney's Out of Order.

I took advantage of an opening day offer to get Dress Circle  Row B  Seat 17 for £19.50. At that sort of price I just had to go.

I had some idea of what to expect having seen a sum total of one Ray Cooney play previously, Two Into One at Menier Chocolate Factory, which also made me laugh a lot.

The premise was simple enough; a Tory minister planned to miss an important debate and to spend the night with a Labour secretary in a swanky hotel nearby instead. Things went wrong quickly with the discovery of a dead man in their room. From there on deception led to another as the situation got more and more complex with the arrival of vexed colleagues, anxious spouses and curious hotel staff. Each new arrival and each new event needed a new lie to explain it until the tower of lies had to collapse under its own weight.

The scene was simple enough too; a hotel room with three doors and a window out to a balcony. Standard farce fare, and it is a standard because it works so well and in Out of Order the exits and entrances were frequently unexpected and always neatly timed.

I was hoping for a farce and that is what I got. It was a laugh out loud farce that lifted the spirits that were starting to wilt at the start of another working week.