Noel Coward Theatre, til 5 September

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

If you can’t find something to laugh at here you might be clinically dead inside.

Let’s get one thing straight: if you’re the sort of person who groans at a pun or winces at a pratfall, you should avoid The Comedy About Spies like the plague. This is not the show for you, which you could probably work out from the very first scene, an extended riff on the misunderstandings arising from MI6’s alphabet-based codename system (“That’s what I said!” “‘Agent I’ never said that.”) But if you’re the sort of person who watches reruns of Get Smart, has seen all of the Naked Gun movies and still thinks of Val Kilmer as the guy from Top Secret!, then you will absolutely love this play.

From the team at Mischief Theatre (known for The Play That Goes Wrong, among others) The Comedy About Spies is an out-and-out farce set in the glitz and glamour of 1960s London. British intelligence suggests that an MI6 turncoat will be arriving at the Piccadilly Hotel to hand over plans for a Cold-War-ending mega-weapon (Project Midnight) to the Soviets. The communist agents arrive at the hotel to await the drop-off (despite not actually knowing what their turncoat looks like), alongside a mother-and-son CIA team hoping to intercept the handover (despite not actually knowing what the Russians look like). Joining the incompetent spies at the hotel are civilians Rosemary and Bernard – the latter a hapless baker haplessly trying to find the right moment to propose – and the pompous actor Douglas Woodbead, auditioning for a new film called James Bond (“It’s down to me and some Scottish bloke called Sean”). Cue a series of increasingly improbable (and hilarious) mishaps involving mistaken identity, bad intelligence and truly terrible spycraft.

The plan from playwrights (and cast members) Henry Lewis and Henry Shields seems to be to cram as many gags as possible into the play’s runtime. This approach does mean there are plenty of easy, lowest-common-denominator jokes, but there’s more than enough comedic gold to make up for it. The Comedy About Spies is properly laugh-out-loud funny and picks up the more it goes along, as the zaniness and hijinks continue to escalate. Lewis and Shields cleverly keep the pace up the whole way through so there’s never a dull moment; the audience is always laughing and (almost bizarrely, given how silly it all is) quite invested in the story by the time we get to the final scenes.

Probably the biggest laughs come not from the dialogue but the physical comedy, which is flawlessly executed. There are pratfalls, physical fights, chase sequences and multi-level acrobatics, along with some inspired prop work (look out for a brilliant bit involving a mannequin on a zip wire). It’s this physical comedy where the fantastic cast really shines. It’s a true ensemble performance with no weak link, but perhaps particular credit could go to Adam Byron (actually the understudy) for his plummy booming as the ham Woodbead, or Chris Leask, who as KGB agent Sergei offers up an increasingly ridiculous Ruski accent (and a truly brilliant deadpan line delivery after another character’s monologue that is one of the best punchlines of the night).

It’s a testament to director Matt DiCarlo that there are also a lot of gags derived from the choreography. I was impressed by how much A Comedy About Spies really embraces the actual format of theatre and uses it for comedic effect, cleverly staging sequences to create the biggest laughs. There are some hilarious chase sequences on the revolving stage, for example, and a brilliant set by David Farley that sees the characters’ four hotel rooms stacked together like the Brady Bunch squares.

When looking at some of my other five-star reviews, it seems almost ludicrous to put this broad farce in the same category; you really can’t argue it offers the same writing skill, groundbreaking approach or in-depth themes as, say, For Black Boys. But I think you have to judge each artwork on its own merits, according to its own genre and the intention of its creators. As a comedic farce, The Comedy About Spies really couldn’t be improved. Its intention is to make the audience laugh and it does that in spades – it’s the most I’ve laughed out loud at a West End show in a long while and the rest of the crowd were enjoying it as much as I was. You’d have to be a pretty grumpy soul not to appreciate the comedy genius being offered up by Mischief Theatre here.

Visit the Mischief Theatre website for tickets to The Comedy About Spies.