Uplifting

When strangers Bill and Jim get stuck in a lift, it's pretty inevitable that they should end up reflecting on life and end up best of friends. Resigned to their fate, they start talking, but perhaps they are incompatible after all: Bill is a middle-aged middle-management with a bald patch and little success with the ladies, while Jim is unemployed, doesn't exactly have a way with words but certainly knows his way around a woman.

Well observed and often funny with it, the script smoothly integrates sketches into its sitcom-style plot - and the actors coped magnificently with the diverse set of cameos to act. In the vein of Porridge or Only Fools and Horses, the play showcases the full range of comedy base points through sketch spoofs of picking up in a club, weather reporting and many more. The downside of this comprehensiveness is that often the humour is hackneyed - but of course these topics get hackneyed for a reason. I'm not much of a giggler, but I was in stitches at the man-eating chav character, for all she was stolen from Vicky Pollard. I loved the hilariously geeky scene where the characters realise they don’t have a mobile phone signal in the lift because it acts as a Faraday cage and invent the concept of Schrodinger’s Dogs. (Don’t ask.)

This play is a true cockle-warmer, the perfect chill-out show demanding little from the audience but giving lots of love back. It's the sort of show that would work great on the telly after Richard and Judy - I had a bit of a cold when I went to see Uplifting, and came away as uplifted as I could ask for.