London-based comedy group The Spider Blues make a splash with their brand new adventure comedy show, Captain Alan of Canary Wharf, in association with PBH's Free Fringe. The show is based around the 'World's Most Polite Man', Alan Beadle, played to perfection by Joshua Diffley, who has a disappointing work life at a legal firm and spends hours in his office playing pirate-based fantasy games on his computer. The action centres on one evening when Alan, having had too much to drink, stumbles upon a fantasy world, where he meets a crew of pirates who teach him to be bold. This is a show which brings non-stop laughter and boasts loads of wonderful little moments which highlight both the writer Joey Bartram's and the whole cast's attention to detail.
The Spider Blues achieve a wonderful Alice-in-Wonderland effect by using the same actors to play Alan's work colleagues and his new pirate friends. The cast are incredibly professional and play off each other well, with occasional improvisation to involve the audience in the story. Bartram plays the pirate captain Roger with Jack Sparrow-esque swagger and very tight trousers, and Annabel Baldwin, as receptionist/Alan's love interest, is very funny in a subtle way. While Isabella Valette is at times a bit over the top, both Colin James and Alexander Morelli show they are strong comic actors and perform with poise and charm.
But Diffley, who plays the title role and also speaks the majority of the narrative, is an absolute class act. The simple gesture of removing his glasses turns the character of Alan into the narrator of the tale. The subtle transformation which Diffley makes between the two characters is very slick.
Poignant moments are often pretty overdone in comedy shows, but Roger's message to Alan at the close of the play, a message about seizing the day, is brilliantly understated. All lovers of comedy should see this show, and we are sure to see a lot more from The Spider Blues in the future, perhaps even in a venue that's not a basement, where there's no chance of hitting their heads on the ceiling during action sequences.
