The test of a great mime show is not that you don’t need the words but rather when you realise afterwards that you have not missed them. That certainly sums up the success of the consistently brilliant and funny show from Compagnie le Fils du Grand Réseau currently in residence at the Peacock Theatre.
Anyone who has ever occupied a chambre de bonne in up in the eaves of a tenement building in Paris will recognise the scenario – the super-cramped room, the shared toilet on the landing, the enforced proximity with all the scope for both intimacy and animosity, and the frequent loneliness of the singletons lined up in the little rooms, home alone after work.
This is the world so exquisitely and hilariously imagined in this sequence of scenes for three oddball characters, their loves, hates, and above all convoluted mishaps. The performers build on timeless stereotypes – the thin man, the fat man and the blonde woman – but then spin hugely creative arabesques out of these familiar tropes. There is a debt, as you would expect, to Jacques Tati, but also to Laurel and Hardy, in the way that gags start innocently enough and then build up to a whole chain of more and more improbable outcomes, with a great cumulative humour that leaves you convulsed with laughter. There are also a whole sequence of running gags – the fishbowl and its unfortunate occupant, as you would expect, but also a stowaway toilet bowl – that just get better and better as the evening progresses.
A short review cannot in any way do justice to the complexity of the action or the variety of scenarios devised – in fact you want to see the show again immediately there is so much there to notice and admire. What impresses above all is the attention to detail and the team effort above all – with no text to fall back on that places extra weight on the soundtrack, which is immaculately coordinated, on the brilliantly flexible, minutely devised set, and on the backstage staff who ensure that wigs and bras fly through the air, that builder’s dust rises in the stairwell, that disgusting locks of hair end up in the soup….
While much of the laughter follows predictable, timeless lines, there are some delightfully quirky touches too – a false ending that quite took me in, a tour de force of a storm sequence, which has all of the characters out on the roof in apparent peril, and many moments of tenderness and repose as well, which seemed to resonate powerfully with an audience all too aware of how easy it is to be alone in a crowd.
It is really impossible to fault this show in its technical bravura, the sheer invention of the humour as much as the special effects, and the acute judgment of structure – no scene overstayed its welcome and the overall length, just shy of 90 minutes, was spot on. This is the third show in a row I have awarded the top reviewer’s accolade – either I am going soft, or this period after the end of the panto season with a wave of new productions is just one of the richest times in the London theatrical year
Peacock Theatre
A production by Pierre Guillois
co-written by Agathe L’Huillier and Olivier Martin-Salvan
Production: Compagnie le Fils du Grand Réseau
Until 31 January 2026
1hr 25 mins, no interval
Photo Credit: Fabienne Rappeneau