Rory Mullarkey’s eat-the-rich comedy attempts to illuminate the ridiculousness of Britain and the unfailing bias towards the unaccountable upper classes. But it does so with a style that rarely wavers from a grating hamminess, leaving you hoping the rich will get eaten much faster than the run time promises.
Sending up the cares and customs of the super wealthy, the play focuses on a demanding posh kid in his “lad pad” in Chelsea. Laurie Kynaston is the rotten, spoilt viscount Theodore “Tug” Bungay, told by his mother Lady Agrippina (a sniffy, dispassionate Fenella Woolgar) that he’s being cut off and his beloved countryside castle is being sold to an on-the-run Russian oligarch. Cue the whole gang lolloping around the castle impersonating the potential buyer, each one attempting to out-Spartacus the other with vaguely Russian accents and slicked back hair to, by turns, save or scupper the castle’s future.
