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Review: The Mentalists

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There was a time when theatre audiences were as likely to a see a play because of who wrote it as who starred in it. I'm not suggesting that stand-up comedian and The Office co-creator Stephen Merchant is not worthy of top billing. In his West End debut he convincingly conveys the seething resentment of a man who thinks he should be more important than he is. But the reason to see this comedy, first seen in 2002, is an old school one - the man who wrote it.

The prolific Richard Bean would go on to write possibly the funniest play of the century so far with One Man, Two Guvnors . And just as the recent production of Bean's first play Toast, which drew on his work in a Hull bakery, revealed what a cracking play that still is, so this production of The Mentalists, drawn surely from Bean's experience as an occupational psychologist, shows the craft in the playwright's early work.

The setting is a grotty Finsbury Park hotel room. Enter Merchant's Ted, a middle-aged, middle-management type in mid-life crisis. His best mate Morrie (Steffan Rhodri), a barber and womaniser, has brought along a video camera to film Ted's announcement to the world that he is founding a new society that values cleanliness, good behaviour and sleeping with your own wife. It is a vision inspired by a book found while Ted's son was knocking down a shed in Chingford.

Written by the psychologist BF Skinner, Ted is convinced it has lessons that will allow mankind to live a better life. That's right. He's mad. But for a while it seems he is just a bit of obsessive. Morrie, who has his own issues (like Ted, he's a Barnardo's boy) humours Ted before realising that his friend might just be off his trolley. Put another way, he "fell asleep on the District Line and woke up in Barking."

There are lots of gags of this quality. And some are much more effective now than they were when the play was first seen. Ted's observation about the Greeks "who peaked early" is one. Once the most advanced civilisation, all they are good for now is "driving a taxi at 90 miles per hour in f**king flip flops."

The surprise here is how Morrie - hitherto played by Rhodri with a gormless kind of charm - responds to Ted's condition. Rather than more ding dong banter he exhibits a tender and wise understanding of Ted's psychology. It not only allows his friend to appreciate his own condition but it elevates Abbey Wright's production above that of an entertaining two hander rooted in Odd Couple humour.

This, it turns out, is a quietly moving study of friendship and loyalty.

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