Taking place on the set of children’s TV show “Freddy Funky Fingers & The Fluffless Followers TV Hour”, Soft Toy Mafia is a very dark comedic play that chronicles the final episode.
The tensions and politics between the characters “off screen” created plenty of conflict from which to derive numerous comic situations. This was especially humorous when it spilled onto the TV show so you could laugh as you imagined the young audience at home being tramatised by the crude chaos. There was a definite pecking order in the “cast” and the constant shifting of this hierachy was the source for much mirth. A lot of the humour came from the creative insults the characters traded with one another and there were plenty of them flying around. The over the top nature of those people portrayed had the audience laughing at how incredibly stupid and cruel they were, very much laughing at them and not with them.
The cast portrayed the roles extremely well, giving them much more depth than these vacuous and self absorbed characters deserved. They worked as a well oiled machine and bounced off one another well. The stage manager was particularly evil and the perfect villan of the play. The others showed their two-faced personalities over the duration and most characters developed as the plot unfolded.
Being set on a TV show there were some video segments projected onto a screen. Ads for the most inappropriate products, a bizarre rival show and an overdubbed children’s TV favorite were hilarious.
The musical component to the show consisted of two songs that bookended the show. The first plunged the audience head first into the TV show and the dark undercurrent of the show and was quite funny. The finale merely summarized the events we had witnessed and wasn’t particularly humourous lyrically and quite melancholic, although the appearance of a singing corpse did raise a chuckle.
Soft Toy Mafia was wonderfully dark piece of theatre that kept the punters laughing and entertained.
Visit the Comedy@Trades Website for booking details.