EdFringe Review: The Librarians: A Very Serious Comedy!

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Set inside the crumbling, damp-ridden Plumstanton Library—where even choosing a biscuit packet requires a committee vote—writers Matthew Howell and Jack Michael Stacey construct a classic farce out of municipal decay. Directed by Katie-Ann McDonough for Cabbage Productions, the story kicks off when a collapsing bookcase in the Agatha Christie section squashes the head librarian.

In steps Jill (Jo Hartland), a mysteriously disgraced former civil servant dispatched from London to take charge. This leaves long-suffering Assistant Head Harry Wordsworth (co-writer Howell) bitterly passed over for promotion. Meanwhile, archivist Elaine (Billie Hamer)—comically trigger-happy with her ‘fine’ stamp—and an adult Work Experience placement (co-writer Stacey), still desperately seeking signatures on his school evaluation years after leaving education, are caught in the administrative fallout just as a ruthless council inspector arrives for a surprise audit.

The physical comedy is carried off with commendable energy. To hide empty shelves and decaying infrastructure, the staff shuffle signposts, scramble for a disconnected landline, and navigate unreliable lights. Modern digital headaches like broken Wi-Fi and ChatGPT blunders sit comfortably alongside references to viral local government drama like Jackie Weaver and an angry local mob demanding a Jeremy Clarkson book signing, hitting cross-generational funny bones with broad, dependable jokes. Hartland brings a fine sense of managed chaos to Jill’s management schemes, Howell mines solid laughs from Harry’s lingering resentment, and Hamer lands sharp comic hits whenever Elaine gleefully slaps down a financial penalty.

A Farce of Municipal Decay and Sitcom Ambitions

There is nothing wrong with structuring a show like the pilot for a late 20th-century sitcom, which this show most certainly is. As a framework, it’s a style which will never fully go out of fashion, because when done well, it can produce stone-cold classics.

The issue with The Librarians is simply that the formula isn’t executed well enough. The script spends too much time portraying the staff as complete buffoons and the library itself as an unused relic. While comedy doesn’t require uncritical affection for its heroes or antiheroes, a story built around saving an imperilled community asset seems to demand that the audience actually root for the place and the team trying to rescue it. You could lean the other way and make them even more horribly and comically bad at their jobs, but not without completely undercutting the show’s philosophical heart.

Nevertheless, McDonough’s cast execute the silly gags and slapstick with conviction and clockwork timing, making The Librarians an agreeable hour of fringe entertainment, even if the script falls short of its retro ambitions.

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