Comedy duo The Pin have livened up lockdown with their Zoom send-ups. Now their end-of-the-pier stage debut is being hailed as ‘the cure for theatre’. Is that why so many stars are lining up to get involved?
If you’d placed a bet on which comedians would one day open their new farce in the West End – a fond tribute to end-of-the-pier comedy – you wouldn’t have plumped for The Pin. Or at least not until recently. Graduates of elite comedy finishing school Cambridge Footlights, Alex Owen and Ben Ashenden were always brilliant, but never anyone’s idea of heirs to Cannon and Ball. But that’s how they’ve cast themselves in The Comeback, a sort of two/four-hander about a pair of duelling double acts that, Covid permitting, re-illuminates theatreland next month.
The show is being billed as “the cure for theatre” by producer Sonia Friedman, who describes its mix of big laughs, door slams and slapstick as a tonic for theatregoers after months bereft of live entertainment. Those who saw its original outing will agree: this dazzling neo-Noises Off was a highlight of the 2018 Edinburgh fringe. Owen and Ashenden have since spent two years developing that funny 50 minutes into a substantial stage play. They’ve also experienced out-of-the-blue success as the UK’s foremost purveyors of Zoom comedy. Their series of lockdown sketches, making hay with work-from-home video-conferencing etiquette, are hilarious (while also making it disconcerting to interview them, as I’m doing, over Zoom).