Black comedy tests limits of humour (From Your Local Guardian)

Morality tale The Fumidor plays The Warehouse Theatre

3:20pm Thursday 27th October 2011 in Theatre By Nick Hitchens

The Fumidor, playing at the Warehouse Theatre, Croydon, is black comedy with the lights turned off.

Multi-media props, puppetry and a health dose of smoke accompany a morality tale as gruesome as anything to come from the pen of Chaucer.

Only the darkest of humours will be tickled by scenes of a public hanging, a nun turned on by thoughts of her naked saviour on the cross, and a rape-conceived baby thrown in the trash yet these moments are mixed with light-hearted banter and Pythonesque farce.

Set in an imaginary town, the story flips between the past and present, explaining how a string of terrible murders led to the creation of a quite literally hopping mad repressive religious state, based around the menacing Fumidor.

Writer and director Peter Bramley has concocted an enthralling story to keeps his audience genuinely gripped, but the extreme nature of the content will turn many off before it reaches its climax.

The young cast, drawn from graduates of Rose Bruford College, Sidcup, put in some sterling performances, with Gillian Mackie’s brothel owner Madame Slacktrout, accompanied by the beautifully named wenches Chlamydia, Gonorrhoea and Cystitis providing much needed levity.

Also worthy of mention is arch baddie Father Rankensour, played by Raymi Rennee, who cannot be criticised for lack of commitment, though by the end even his fellow actors seem slightly stunned by the energy of his performance.

Fumidor is a unique work which is guaranteed to provoke debate, but beware, this is not for the fainthearted.

Pants on Fire presents The Fumidor at The Warehouse Theatre, Dingwall Road, East Croydon until November 20.

Shows are daily, excluding Mondays, check the website www.warehousetheatre.co.uk for times.

Tickets cost £12.50 or £11 for members