Inside No. 9 Stage/Fright Reviews Round-up – Starring Steve Pemberton & Reece Shearsmith

"Inside No 9’s brilliant blend of macabre comedy comes to the West End in Stage/Fright"

"Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith move from TV to the Wyndham’s Theatre with a fascinating, multi-layered piece"

"... endings are never quite what they seem where Pemberton and Shearsmith are concerned, and now up they pop, bringing their blend of macabre comedy to London’s West End. It’s a move that builds on our enthusiasm for stage frights"

"...Stage/Fright is a multi-layered piece on the whole business of haunting: who haunts whom, where and why? And while fans will delight in spotting Easter eggs in the plot, the pair mix it up with a meta-theatrical story specific to their new location. They draw on beloved performances past and revel in deliberate misdirection, sudden shifts of perspective and the glories of live theatre."

"Popular theatre styles past and present collide; Grace Smart’s shape-shifting set, Yves Barre’s deliberately ridiculous costumes and Neil Austin’s wildly dramatic lighting get in on the act."

"There’s a lot that’s absurdly funny, as well as one sequence that is genuinely hair-raising. Meanwhile a deeper, more moving thread works through the piece about the interplay between acting, memory and haunting."

"Another wildly clever, madly innovative and suddenly moving show from this inspired duo. Will it be their last gasp? Who knows."

"Slick chills in Shearsmith and Pemberton’s creepy West End comedy"

"The double act transfer their TV hit to the stage in an ingenious edge-of-your-seat, one-step-ahead show which is in love with old theatres and their ghosts"

"From its murderous prologue on – hands-down the most memorable mobile phone announcement ever made in a theatre – this live show is as twisty and unpredictable as the best of their episodes on the BBC."

"Some of those episodes are recalled here, in a two hours-plus performance that retains the TV series’ anthology spirit. You don’t leave feeling like you’ve seen one play but several."

"Arguably, its portfolio nature comes at the expense of cohesion – although we’re never far from the haunting theme, as lights flicker and the living are forever mistaken for the dead. Lily-livers such as me may spend half the show teetering on the edges of their seats, as Shearsmith and Pemberton deliver jump-scares on stage"

"It’s a slickly produced spooky wheeze, distinguished by Shearsmith and Pemberton’s clearly personal obsession with the double-act dynamic and old-school entertainment, and with theatres and their ghosts."

"Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton’s two-and-a-half hour stage send-off to their beloved horror anthology is a twisted joy"

"I’m not sure if it’s heretical or actually normal to think Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton’s beloved BBC horror anthology series Inside No 9 is a bit patchy. ... Stage/Fright, though, is a delight, the duo at the peak of their powers."

"Stage/Fright is a tribute to a theatre and the stage life in a broader sense – the play-within-a-play second act is informed by a genuine love of the theatre and a series of West End Wendy in jokes that may baffle non-theatre nerds"

"At the core of a rock solid cast of 10, both men have a real presence – part vaudevillian, part thespian, part sitcom star – and a sheer belief in their own material that means it never feels like a flimsy spin off, even when they’re literally recreating scenes off the telly. It is, however, very much a gift to the show’s fans."

"The hit TV chiller makes a bold West End debut"

"Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith prove their mettle with an evening that gives the audience a good laugh – and a valuable fright"

"As well as pushing at the boundaries of innovation on the small-screen, with twists galore, the series always carried a strong sense of the theatrical. Even so, the question remained as to whether co-stars Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith could work matching wonders live. Well, they can: although more of a collectible add-on than a stand-alone pleasure in its own right, Stage/Fright re-affirms their rare ingenuity."

"Without wishing to give the game away, this is an evening that tallies the need to give us a good laugh and a valuable fright – encapsulating their relish for the absurd and macabre – with reflections on mortality and loss."

"... overall the sheer craft and audacity of the attempt is satisfying and even stirring. These two pals, brilliantly supported by a cast of eight, are nobly applying their talent and experience to holding a mirror up to our disturbed natures, and discombobulating us in ways that linger and provoke. Bravo."

"Inside No 9 live on stage is a whirl of new ideas"

"Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith bring their BBC horror-comedy series to the theatre — and it’s frighteningly enjoyable"

"It’s safe to say that jokes, scares and tweaks on expectations come from the first moment to the last. The pair bring into play everything from the bowels of the stage to the ushers flanking it, from the programme to the footlights. They will drop Inside No 9 in-jokes, but also theatre in-jokes (yes, bar prices included). Their “remember to switch off your phone” warning is arguably the greatest, certainly the bloodiest yet staged."

"It’s an end-of-the-pier show meets Grand Guignol, a fond farewell meets Michael Frayn-ish metatheatre. It gives you the willies one moment and makes you giggle the next."

"How can they be ludicrous and tender and authoritative all at once? I don’t know, but they have been doing it for 30 years and it’s a joy to see it in the flesh."

"... Stage/Fright takes the soggy old notion of the TV spin-off and invests it with love, care, surprises and skill. Out of ideas? Pah! This is as ram-jammed with ideas as anything on the London stage."

"Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton deliver an all-encompassing adaptation"

"... although the stage show provides a shiver of recognition for all those who have loved the original stories – bound together by some relevance to the number nine – it also works perfectly well for the uninitiated, with a structure that literally does what it says in the title, combining staging and fright."

"The first half – Stage – begins with a wickedly funny scene set in the audience for Hamlet, which begins to lay the trails of misdirection and suggestion for which Inside No 9 is famous."

"The second half – Fright – takes this idea and runs with it. It begins in an asylum and ends with a dim actress terrified that she has seen a ghost. En route, throughout, there are not only references for viewers of the TV series – a joke about “A Quiet Night In”, references to “Sardines” and “One Last Trip” – but also layers of meta-theatricality, with gags about the theatre, celebrities taking over the West End and Jamie Lloyd’s use of video."

"There are moments of sheer fright, but there are also a lot of joyously silly jokes, both physical – the understudy stuck in a cupboard who can barely walk, she is so cramped – and verbal."

"Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith bring their outlandish comic talents to the stage in this live variation of their successful TV series. The combination of weird, grotesque and funny tales comes across like a cyanide cocktail topped off with a little paper parasol and a glacé cherry."

"It’s fitfully amusing and culturally parochial, relying heavily on an intimate knowledge of British TV. I could have done with more scares and creepy moments. Loud bangs and blackouts are cheap shock effects and these guys are better than this. Yet there is no denying their versatility and energy and when the jokes hit they explode like comedy warheads."

"Part smart reinvention and part lazy cash-in"

"Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith’s dark anthology TV series his the stage with mixed results"

"There’s an undeniable thrill at seeing the duo –also formerly two-fourths of The League of Gentlemen – in the flesh, riffing like the old-school double-acts they idolise, and channeling their parallel love of horror into IRL jump scares. But there’s an over-reliance on rehashed TV material, metatheatrical jokes, and pop-culture references that will be baffling to anyone under 50. Oh well, most of the run has sold out already. Ker-ching."

"The best in-joke is the first: the curtain opens on a bank of theatre seats facing us, where Pemberton’s noisy character and two others indulge in breaches of theatrical etiquette that steadily drive Shearsmith’s peevish fellow punter into a murderous fury."

"The pair’s talent for misdirection and surprise is undimmed, and is put to service for some hair-raising shocks in the second half, a spoof of both Hammer horror and contemporary luvviedom."

"... not only the pop-culture references are old-fashioned: in the second-half horror spoof, involving a pervy surgeon in an insane asylum, Anna Francolini(YES) and Miranda Hennessy(YES) play a gorgon and a dumb blonde straight out of the 70s."

"It’s decent fun, directed with knockabout energy and great timing by Simon Evans. Pemberton and Shearsmith are mordantly likeable."

"Fans will enjoy unpicking its snarl of tangled entrails"

"Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith’s entertaining stage spin-off of their acclaimed TV series is short on shivers"

"... a full-length stage work is another entirely, and at times here, the pair don’t appear fully in control of their own creation. Directed by Simon Evans, it’s a Frankenstein’s monster of a show: a portmanteau assemblage of jump scares, Grand Guignol, old-school variety double act and campy, comic schlock horror."

"The element of surprise is, of course, crucial, so I’ll dodge the spoilers. There’s a fair amount of front-of-cloth, music-hall-style patter from Shearsmith and Pemberton, and the grisly tales are linked by themes of loss, vengeance, envy and grief."

"It’s a show in need of a stronger sense of purpose and identity: it’s not quite funny, emotionally involving or frightening enough, even though it has flickers of all those elements. As an evening’s entertainment, it’s diverting, and enthusiasts of the series will enjoy unpicking its snarl of tangled thematic entrails. But without mustering more of the delicious shiver of the genuinely uncanny, it’s unlikely to haunt anyone’s dreams."

"Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith turn into their own live tribute act"

"Inside No 9: Stage/Fright is not a lazily dumped transfer from screen to stage, but nor is it completely new invention. An anthology of the anthology series, in which each star-sprinkled episode busts into a new genre behind a different door marked No 9, it is something like an evening by a tribute band in which the impersonators turn out to be the real thing."

"The stage show is less high-voltage, partly because it has not mastered the telly’s zooming closeups, both naturalistic and startling. Comedy and alarm are both dimmer."

" The freshest moments are the newest. There is a nifty spin on the No 9 door, reallocated to a place in the auditorium. The audience is warned that terrible things happen in Wyndham’s, such as “Kenneth Branagh’s King Lear”"

"Inspiration runs low in this stage spin-off"

"Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith’s adaptation of their long-running BBC comedy series goes for common-denominator laughs and recycles clichés"

"If you thought Armando Iannucci and Sean Foley’s recent version of Doctor Strangelove — a star vehicle for Steve Coogan — lacked ambition, prepare to be underwhelmed even further by this laboured set of ghoulish sketches. It starts promisingly with a skit poking gentle fun at bad behaviour in the stalls, but those that follow increasingly go for lowest-common-denominator laughs. It’s also hard to warm to the overarching conceit that Wyndham’s Theatre in the West End has become the setting for inexplicable supernatural goings-on."

"Pemberton and Shearsmith have, understandably, asked reviewers not to reveal spoilers. All I can say is that the supposedly grand twist at the end landed with all the force of a blancmange."

"Among the many theatrical in-jokes scattered here there is a dig at the craze for surrounding stage actors with video cameras. Nice one. Yet this show seems quite content to recycle its own share of clichés."