Review of the new play set in the world of sitcom writing

Set in a workshop for would-be sitcom creators, Jumping The Shark puts one well-known tip above all others: write what you know.

Playwrights David Cantor and Michael Kingsbury have certainly heeded their own advice. With stints on sitcoms such as My Family and Two Pints Of Lager, they are clearly steeped in the rules of the genre. Indeed the first half of their new play serves as a pretty effective primer for any genuine aspiring writers, as tutor Frank Donahue (David Schaal) covers all the key points anyone needs to know. With this coming after a florid monologue namechecking some of the most memorable scenes and characters in British sitcom history, it’s clear this is their love letter to the genre – even if the way it's expressed can be a bit clunky.

Enrolling in Frank’s two-day seminar in a generic hotel conference room are five disparate characters, all representing broad archetypes. Robin Sebastian’s Gavin is a pretentious, old-school, old-of-work luvvie under the misapprehension his theatrical anecdotes are universally enthralling; Jack Trueman’s Dale is the loudmouth working-class Cockney geezer whose comic sensibilities are stuck in the 1970s. Harry Visinoni’s Morgan is an angry young poet, full of bitter cynicism; Jasmine Armfield’s Amy is the eager-beaver young student; and Sarah Moyle’s Pam is a mild-mannered housewife seeking escape from a miserable home life but having had all confidence sucked from her.

She’s the most interesting and three-dimensional one of the lot, although her more interesting storyline is given no primacy. In the hands of a weak cast, the limitations of all these delegates would have been very exposed, but this effective ensemble bring some credibility to the stereotypes, even if they are sometimes required to play them up in a way that’s, well, sitcommy.

At the end of the first session, Frank springs a surprise assignment on the group: to write and present a sample scene from their sitcom for him to appraise the next day. This is where things get a bit bumpy as we’re presented five mini-scripts of various degrees of awful. Some deliberately so – such as Dale’s predictably sexist, homophobic and xenophobic offering (ironically, perhaps, showing the real writers’ classism) – while others we’re expected to believe have potential that isn’t all that obvious.

Yet there are some fines lines both within the scrips, and in the zippy conversations that surroundm, while the tone rattles between slapstick and maudlin and all points between. Meanwhile, it slowly transpires that Frank’s career since his heyday might not have been all it seems and that Amy has something of a score to settle with him, using her draft script to do so, none-too-subtly.

Everything resolves to relatively clean satisfaction, usually a little too easily, with the script hinting at some of the frustrations affecting comedy writers at both ends of their career, without ever really getting its teeth into anything, nor being hilarious enough for that not to matter. But it’s a diverting enough bit of easily-consumed theatre.

• Jumping The Shark was reviewed at Upstairs At The Gatehouse in Highhgate, North London. It plays the Rose Theatre, Edinburgh this week, the Assembly Hall Theatre in Tunbridge Well next Monday, and the Haymarket Theatre, Basingstoke from March 28 to April 1.

Review date: 13 Mar 2023
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett