Suitcase Royale review

Oh dear. I always think it's a big, illuminated, flashing sign of something gone wrong when all you can remember about a show is the set. Sadly - despite recommendations from two comedians - Suitcase Royale's The Ballad of Backbone Joe just did not make the grade for me.

Backbone Joe, a bare-knuckle fighter in awe of his brutal boss Messy Dimes Dan, is mourning the tragic death of his wife. Detective Von Trapp arrives in town with a message and finds a mystery to solve. I can see why some would like it. Ramshackle monkey business tied into a tidy (but transparent) tale of murder with junkyard blues makes for a good show, yes?

The set was great, and the props even better - who would've thought you could transform a suitcase into a car, complete with working headlights - but all this just wasn't enough to hold my attention.

The publicity said it was a cross between Wallace and Grommit and David Lynch. Instead of trying to mix the two, they should have stuck to one style instead. The story would have worked better for me had it been complete buffoonery or 100 per cent macabre - not this odd mix somewhere in between. It was almost like it couldn't make up its mind at what it wanted to be, and some of the deliberate fooling about ended up simply getting on my nerves instead of being endearing. Did the phone prop really break, boys, did it? And did it deserve all that corpsing? No.

I'm sure some will say I'm uncultured and a heathen. I wanted to like it, I really did, and I really tried. But all I wanted to do was escape out of that dark theatre and into the sunny Pleasance Courtyard for another of those delicious ice creams. Sorry.

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The Ballad of Backbone Joe listing