A nerd’s love triangle

VICTOR'S LAMENT
Hen and Chickens

HALF a mile from Islington’s roaring video piracy market in Holloway, the Federation Against Copyright Theft was holding an audience hostage.
After being handed my programme pinned to a juicy red apple, this forced act of incarceration at the hands of our entertainers felt almost normal as we took our seats at the Hen and Chickens Theatre for Adam Riches’ ‘guilty’ comedy Victor’s Lament.
Victor (Adam Riches) and his federation surveillance officer pal Dave (Glynn Reed) – holed up in a theatre to spy on a Korean piracy factory – inform us of the highs and lows of their relationships with Anneka (Katharine Bennett-Fox), Dave’s wife and Victor’s lover.
The audience has no choice but to pay attention as to leave would blow the officers’ cover.
The two best friends, never bright enough to join the police, take their jobs extremely seriously as they stress in earnest the damage piracy does to the movie business – “we police with a small p”, the verb, not the noun, they explain.
Dave is on the way to breakdown, certain his wife is cheating but never for a second suspecting his friend.
Victor the muscle-bound six-foot, slightly dim hunk, sees nothing wrong with consoling his cuckolded friend while concealing his affair with his wife.
“I’ve got morals,” he tells us, “I just like to employ them on a part-time basis.”
Sadly Anneka is hard to like, which draws a minor question mark over her allure, but this is over-ridden by Victor’s smart comments – the strongest feature of the show.
The finale is a little hard to believe, even silly, but the smart script carries it through.
It’s hard to make a scant audience laugh but with Victor’s witty one-liners, and egotistical confidence in his own physique (aided by some superman-style padding), these guys managed to raise a fair amount of audible mirth.
Until August 26
020 7704 2001

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