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When is a play not a play? When it picks up a Perrier Award.
Previous winners such as the Pub Landlord have stretched standup's definition to embrace character comedy, but the 2001 guidelines must be made of industrial-strength elastic to endorse what is essentially a comic play. Albeit an ironically ham-fisted one, starring spoof horror scribe Marenghi (Matthew Holness), whose idea of acting is donning a different-coloured leather jacket. But thank heavens for flexibility. Netherhead is a scream, strictly in the humorous sense.
Marenghi is introduced by publisher/publicity agent Dean Lerner (Richard Ayoade) of erotic horror specialists Beelzebooks - "works that'll scare you stiff". He promptly takes us on a dark journey of the mind, playing an Egyptologist pursued by the ghost of his son, killed in a tragic hang-gliding accident over the A40.
Marenghi thinks he is a gore guru, but he is clearly a graduate of the Ernie Wise school via Alan Partridge, unintentionally banal to the point of hilarity. "Romford was the cruellest of cities", is surely the platonic ideal of naff scene-setting.
Forget the Perrier small print, Netherhead is the kind of work that deserves every gong going. Plaudits too for co-stars Ayoade and Alice Lowe, whose convincing camel impersonation deserves its own laurel. Well conceived and exquisitely executed, many of the lines easily surpass the genre's very worst clichÈs. "His lovemaking was compact and utterly satisfying, like corned beef," will haunt this critic for many years. Comic brilliance that should give their stand-up rivals nightmares.
Also at the Soho Theatre from 29 October to 17 November. Box office: 020 7478 0100.
Garth Marenghi's Netherhead
