CASH ON DELIVERY by The Stage Club

“Cashing in”

Reviewer: Myle Yan Tay
Performance: 20 February 2019

For a farce to work, actors need to be continually bouncing a giant ball of energy. Every gag is a pass or lob, and without enough focus, the ball drops. The slightest error in timing and the ball misses its mark. And as the game progresses, the ball needs to get bigger and bigger to keep the audience engaged. This ball is ever-present in the Stage Club’s latest production, Cash on Delivery, written by Michael Cooney. Although there are funny and entertaining moments, more could have been done to make sure that ball stayed in the air throughout the show’s two-hour duration.

Cash on Delivery follows Eric Swann, a young man who has been cheating the state’s social security system. His life starts to unravel when a fraud inspector needs to verify Swann’s claims. In typical farce fashion, there are mistaken identities, physical comedy, drunken escapades, absurd characters, and plenty of wordplay. These provide plenty of comedic fodder for the first hour of the performance.

After intermission, however, the show starts to lurch. The performers do their best to keep the story alive but the script feels too long. Scenes start to become repetitive and formulaic, bordering on predictable. Before intermission, a clever turn-of-phrase could elicit a hearty laugh from the crowd. After, the banter becomes monotonous, lacking the same freshness from its first half. And with a two-hour running time, it becomes almost impossible to keep escalating the stakes without becoming tiresome.

Swann’s descent is elevated by Neal Thapar’s performance, full of wide-eyed panic and snappy transformations. Thapar is precise in his performance, and remains clear and controlled no matter what Swann is getting up to. Unfortunately, other performers struggle with this – when the character’s mania overwhelms the actor’s voice, line delivery often becomes incoherent.

On a similar note, there are multiple lines that could not be heard over the audience’s roaring laughter. Though this is a good problem to have, future productions would fare well to ride the audience’s laughter rather than attempting to fight it.

Another issue is that as this script was first staged in London in 1996, some of the humour feels dated, especially jokes pertaining to cross-dressing and gender. It is possible that Cooney meant to critique the characters’ limited perspectives, but without even discussing political correctness, the jokes fail to go beyond crudeness or shock value.

Cash on Delivery starts strong, and there’s plenty of laughs to be had as Swann’s web of lies grows and grows. But, at a point, the web becomes too big to even keep track of, and the team drops the ball. Coupled with the play’s lacklustre ending, this reviewer can’t help but feel that the Stage Club’s experience with farces could be put to better use on a snappier and sharper script.