The Unfriend, a new comedy by Seven Moffat and directed by Mark Gatiss, premiered at Chichester Festival Theatre last year to a good reception and has now transferred to London.
Moffat has won many awards: BAFTAs for Doctor Who and EMMYs for Sherlock. So, expectations are high.
A middle-aged couple on holiday on a cruise ship meet a brash middle-aged American woman and rashly invite her to drop in and see them if she is ever in England. The American takes them at their word and arrives with luggage.
The couple go online to see if they can find any information about her. They discover she is a murder suspect who has killed a number of people, including her father and her husband.
The premise sounds like it might be really good for a comedy-thriller but the comedy is weakly contrived and the thrills, disappointingly, never materialise. The play has been massively overrated.
The Unfriend is the sort of thing you might see in a sit-com on television, its rightful home. The audience’s biggest laugh was for an extended lavatory joke with a policeman having stomach problems.
Reece Shearsmith and Amanda Abbington play the couple. Shearsmith is an expert farceur, and his facial reactions, body language and timing are the main pleasure of the evening. Frances Barber is the suspect serial killer who wins over the couple’s stroppy teenagers and makes them nicer people. Michael Simkins is amusing as a boring neighbour.
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