Inside No. 9: Stage/Fright
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. But that’s how I tend to feel: there are some classic episodes, but by the end it felt like the duo were really fighting to inject new life into the 30-minutes-with-a-twist-at-the-end formula, and probably only succeeded about half of the time.
Stage/Fright, though, is a delight, the duo at the peak of their powers. Running at well over two hours, it dips into the TV show – the first half heavily revolves around the episode Bernie Clifton’s Dressing Room – but it is a rare spinoff that feels totally a thing of the theatre. That’s partly a result of the pair’s long standing fascination with Grand Guignol, music hall, stand-up and other forms of stage entertainment (they of course began their careers in live sketch troupe The League of Gentlemen).
But while that’s represented in their script and Simon Evans’s production, the fact is that the duo both now have long and impressive stage CVs. 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 – the spoofing of Jamie Lloyd’s Sunset Boulevard during the second half is particularly delightful, especially when it audaciously segues into a found-footage horror homage. Theatres have featured in...