A few days leave from work recently reintroduced me to the world of daytime television, and in particular, those tacky gameshows that are torture to watch but impossible to switch off. These game-shows have inspired Wheel of Misfortune, now playing a limited run at The Old Red Lion Theatre. We find ourselves as the audience in studio 11b, at the filming of a pilot which is hoping to find itself commissioned for prime time (daytime) ITV. A series of contestants tell the audience their tales of misfortune, hoping to get the most boohoo’s (because boohoo’s make smackeroo’s).
The format is merely a vehicle for the Monorogue players to present their eight-or-so-minute long monologues.  As the title suggests each monologue centres around some unfortunate tale but the telling of them is comedy gold. Of course, some are funnier than others but they are all very well executed. The game-show styling works well to kick things off but gets a little repetitive, though it does help to whip up the audiences’s enthusiasm.
The ‘hosts’ bookend the show, Anabel Barnston’s #Fail sees an Instagram celebrity talk almost entirely in hashtags, while Helen Rose-Hampton’s Omission of Light tells the more traditional celebrity story.
Most of the monologues though, focus on the comedy and pain in everyday life. Angela Harvey is the committed doctor, jilted at the alter in Squits, while Michael Luke Walsh’s There’s Something About Sarah takes a farcical look at a first date. Laurie Stevens performs Safe Place which hints at a darker relationship than the title suggests, and Matthew Williams is the aggressive loan shark who sees himself as a good Samaritan in Mike Elliston’s Once Bitten.
I particularly enjoyed Geraldine Brennan’s China Crisis because the subject shouldn’t have been that interesting (a woman who collects china tea sets), yet the way it’s told makes it utterly riveting. Highlight of the show though, had to be Daniel James Bailey with Jimmy. For half the performance you can hear a pin drop the story is so intense, and then in an instant it switches to the most hilarious tale of the night, it was rather like watching a modern day Alan Bennett.
Wheel of Misfortune is unlikely to be commissioned for prime time ITV anytime soon, mainly because it’s just too good for daytime TV, so it would be wise to see it at The Old Red Lion while you can.
