Review: Oh Zeus! at Cast Doncaster

“…a fever-dream riot of laughs…”

Oh Zeus! by John Nicholson, Cast Doncaster

By Sean Sable

It is no exaggeration to say that I am practically a comedy sommelier. With a childhood resplendent with Monty Python’s Flying Circus, A Bit of Fry & Laurie, Fawlty Towers, Blackadder, and Are You Being Served?, I grew up in a mélange of the best comedy to stretch over three decades and this has imbued me with an almost magical ability to find exactly what will get you laughing. Want a bit of sketch comedy? I will sit you in front of a nice glass of Not the Nine O’Clock News. Looking for dominant notes of the absurdist? I know just what vintage Mighty Boosh you need. So, you have to trust me when I say that Oh Zeus! is a delightful blend of Carry On and Fawlty Towers that will absolutely tickle your farcical funny bone. Like a summertime panto written strictly for adults, it feels as if a group of your funniest friends were handed the Greek pantheon and told to behave. They absolutely did not behave.

There is a proper pedigree buried under the silliness. Le Navet Bete (translates to the daft turnip) formed in 2008 out of a friendship struck up years earlier at University of Plymouth. Early success at the Edinburgh Fringe turned them professional, and along the way they developed a longstanding partnership with John Nicholson, the Olivier-nominated director that has helped shape their madcap house style for years. Oh Zeus! began life with a familiar-feeling title and very little else—and you can tell that the whole thing came together through workshopping gags with each other until the funniest version won. The premise is thin by design, and all the better for it: Zeus’ daughter Hebe wants to marry Gregg, a mortal who owns the Hotel Krapios and is the nicest man she knows. Zeus, of course, objects. The first half unfolds in the hotel as the pantheon checks in for the wedding, and the second half hauls us down into Hades, where Zeus submits to a series of trials designed to send him mad.

Fi Russell’s set evolves through several iterations. We begin at the top of Olympus, where a Greek temple sits high on the stage as Zeus, Hera, and Hebe have it out over her intention to marry “Greggs” (and his sausage roll). Later, the fabric that makes up the crags of the mountain is removed to reveal Krapios, a hotel with all the cheap nods to Greek architecture one would expect from a shabby villa on Crete. The set is divided into two (and a bit) levels and about a billion entrances and exits—a must for a good farce. Later, the same set is pared back, and a slide replaces the stairs as we descend into Hades. The whole thing feels like the perfect vehicle for comedy as every door, window, temple, and desk becomes a hiding spot for one of the dozens upon dozens of quick costume changes.

The lighting by Stuart Billinghurst is layered and colourful, and whilst the design employs quite a few washes, they are almost never allowed to just sit there. Instead, a range of lighting techniques stack and repeat, giving each scene extra dimension. When we visit Hades in the underworld, we are assaulted (in the best kind of way) with so much red that the set practically throbs. My favourite touches were the ones that climbed into the comedy bits. When Hera first appears, she reaches up and tugs an invisible pull-chain, a spotlight blinks on around her, and she snaps it off again on her way out—100% pure Hera sass in the execution. Zeus’ tantrums about the wedding call down thunderbolts, and when the second half tips into something more hallucinatory, we get some fun strobes and smoke effects that feel almost burlesque.

I had not expected any music in the show, but was pleasantly surprised when we were treated to a bevy of re-lyriced parodies including a little number about Zeus and his nut allergy, and a ditty built on the bones of “The Lady in Red” that oozed sex and awkwardness in exactly the right proportions. The songs are lightly done, never overlong, and always cheerfully daft. Weird Al Yankovic would be proud.

The costumes, also by Fi Russell, were great fun, with a mix of colourful (and very short) tunics, dresses, and some very sparkly pants. My favourite of the evening was easily Poseidon (a very virile man, if he says so himself), played as an Aussie complete with disco-ready budgie smugglers and a swim cap to match. Every time he stepped on stage, I laughed indecently loud. But perhaps the most impressive thing about the costumes was the rapid-fire changes. There were moments where an actor would walk out one door and into another with a complete costume change (including wig and shoes) in less than 10 seconds. I feel like someone needs to contact Guinness—or an exorcist—about the way the show seemed to shred the space-time continuum.

The cast was made up of three gents who seem like they could be your wittiest mates. Al Dunn plays Zeus (and a dozen or so other roles), a god with the power to level cities and the emotional needs of an insecure teenager. Matt Freeman was a standout playing most of the female roles. I could happily watch an entire show built just around Hera. Sassy and astringently dry, she’s an instant icon. Of course, he also plays many other parts including Moussaka (Tzatziki, Banana Split, whatever…), the hotel porter who steals every scene he’s in. I will stop gushing in a moment, but I also have to lift both arms to his Ares, a god of war with the exact wattage of Ted ‘Theodore’ Logan raised on carnage. Nick Bunt, meanwhile, makes Gregg the sweetest thing in the building. He owns the Hotel Krapios, paints a little, and collects Zeus Top Trumps cards with the earnest devotion of a fanboy, and Bunt plays him so guilelessly that he’s hard not to fall in love with.

In the best kind of panto tradition, the show had some fun audience participation (big whoop-whoop for Niall) and a great deal of room for improvisation. It is that sort of high energy that makes these kinds of shows work. When the players are spending half their energy trying to catch each other out with the odd nipple-lick and every third scene has them corpsing, you know you are in for a good time. They aren’t just trying to make the audience laugh; they are trying to make another comedian laugh, and that is a much harder thing to do. That said, I do have a tiny niggle in an otherwise perfect evening. I have a personal rule about comedy that has never led me astray: the best comedy fits into 90 minutes. It’s the sweet spot: long enough to build to a crescendo, but not so long it sags in the middle or feels like it overstays. At 120 minutes, there is, indeed, a little bit of squidginess when we get to the underworld. If one or two of the smaller bits had been left on the cutting room floor, the show would have sung like a soprano.

If your idea of a perfect summer night involves gods behaving badly and costume changes that border on witchcraft, then heed the call of Olympus and get yourself to Cast. Oh Zeus! is a fever-dream riot of laughs concocted by three people who make the impossible look effortless, and you would be mad as Hades to miss it.

Oh Zeus! plays at Cast Doncaster on Saturday 04 July.

Sean Sable is a Yorkshire-based freelance writer and editor specialising in Young Adult and Horror fiction, frequently at the same time. When she isn’t buried under a pile of books and manuscripts, she is looking for her keys and having extensive one-sided conversations, in Swedish, with her deaf cat. You can find her online at: www.seansable.co.uk