Behind the Scenes of Brick Lane’s The Pleasures of Fanny Musical

‘The funny thing about good slapstick is that it looks completely out of control, when in reality it requires an enormous amount of control,’ said Jack Pallister.

He’s not wrong: stage farce, when executed properly, is an exacting science masquerading as a breakdown. This Friday, Jack and co-writer Shannon Rewcroft face a lively trial by fire as Brick Lane Music Hall opens The Pleasures of Fanny – A Murder Mystery Musical.

Running for a short, spirited engagement from 2 to 6 October, the production seeks to marry the cheeky warmth of British variety with the clockwork mechanics of a traditional whodunnit. The twist? The dining audience are not mere spectators digesting three courses in the dark; they are conscripted into service as the detective squad.

At the centre of this theatrical caper are the Silvertown Lovies Amateur Group—known, with affectionate inevitability, as the SLAGs. They have gathered to stage an ambitious musical adaptation of John Cleland’s infamous 1748 novel, Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure.

Naturally, the venture unravels almost immediately. When a performer drops dead mid-number, the venue goes into lockdown, plunging cast and diners alike into a hunt for a killer.

Dodging Cutlery: Staging Slapstick Farce at Brick Lane Music Hall

Staging that brand of bedlam is tricky enough within the safe confines of a proscenium arch. At Brick Lane Music Hall, the stakes/steaks are considerably higher.

‘The funny thing about good slapstick is that it looks completely out of control, when in reality it requires an enormous amount of control,’ said Jack Pallister.

The venue operates as a live dining room. Performers must weave through three courses of lunch, afternoon tea, or dinner, executing physical routines without sweeping away a guest’s claret.

‘That’s part of the joy of Brick Lane! We’re not working on a conventional stage where you can put a piece of tape down and say, “That’s where the performer stands,”’ said Pallister, who is also part of the cast. ‘The audience are sitting at tables, they’re eating, drinking, talking to each other, and the performers are moving through that world. It makes everything feel much more immediate and slightly dangerous in a good way!’

Pallister, a Carl Alan Award winner whose background spans classical ballet and variety, found his training indispensable for engineering the chaos.

‘My ballet training has probably been more useful for comedy than people might imagine,’ said Pallister. ‘Classical dance teaches you spatial awareness, balance, timing, repetition and, crucially, how to know where your body is in relation to everybody else. Those things are absolutely vital when you’re creating physical comedy. With the variety tradition, there’s also a real understanding of rhythm, knowing when to hold a beat, when to accelerate and, most importantly, when to allow the audience to see what’s coming.’

The real pedagogical (Apologies, I once studied to be a teacher) hurdle, however, was teaching technically proficient dancers how to look thoroughly incompetent.

‘Much harder than making them dance well! Bad dancing is actually incredibly precise,’ said Pallister. ‘If you simply ask a trained performer to “be rubbish”, you tend to get somebody doing a very polished impression of being rubbish, which is somehow even more suspicious. The SLAGs have to look as though they genuinely believe they are brilliant, while occasionally producing something absolutely catastrophic. That’s the sweet spot.’

The secret lies in calibrating the error.

‘We’ve had to work on things like deliberately missing cues, slightly overcooking movements, being half a beat behind, making the wrong shape at exactly the wrong moment and, occasionally, looking far too pleased with yourself when everyone else is clearly falling apart,’ said Pallister. ‘The irony is that the better the performer, the harder it can be, because they have spent years learning how to be precise.’

Underneath the blunders, the safety of the company relies on utter discipline.

‘The golden rule is that the audience should think, “That looked disastrous!” while the performer knows exactly where their foot is going to land,’ said Pallister.

Backstage Egos and Amateur Dramatics: The Play-Within-a-Play

Physical slapstick only works if audiences care about the fools tumbling across the carpet. For co-writer Shannon Rewcroft, the writing demanded satire that honours the beloved eccentricities of amateur dramatics without treating its players as cardboard caricatures.

‘I think the best comedy always has a little bit of truth in it,’ said Rewcroft. ‘Jack and I have both worked in theatre for years, so although the SLAGs are obviously heightened, we’ve also tried to make them proper characters rather than just stereotypes. They have relationships, histories and reasons for behaving as they do, and most importantly, possible motives…’

The play-within-a-play device (familiar to any Mischief Theatre fans) provides a reliable comic engine. As the fictional troupe battle through their dubious period piece, real-life squabbles inevitably complicate the stage.

‘The play-within-a-play element really helps with that too, because we get to see two sides of them: who they are as members of this chaotic theatre company, and then the characters they’re attempting to play in The Pleasures of Fanny,’ said Rewcroft. ‘Inevitably, their own egos, rivalries and backstage dramas start spilling into the performance.’

That friction reflects the universal grievances of stage life. When asked which rehearsal room transgression might tempt an actor to real-life homicide, Rewcroft singled out unsolicited peer critique.

‘Maybe actors giving other actors notes, although I say that carefully because there are absolutely times when actors can help each other and collaborate brilliantly,’ said Rewcroft. ‘But when it becomes someone effectively directing another actor from within the scene, that can be… testing.’

Worse still is the blatant disregard of a colleague mid-verse.

‘I did once work with an actor who broke character and literally yawned in my face while I was delivering a Shakespeare monologue (not a comedy one, I might add), so I know that definitely pushes you a little closer to the edge…’ said Rewcroft.

Clues, Chaos, and Double Entendres: Crafting the Whodunnit Musical

Yet murderous intent on stage is meaningless without a plot tight enough to sustain it. Rewcroft, who has clocked stage hours in straight thrillers including Wait Until Dark and Agatha Christie’s Love from a Stranger, approached the puzzle by engineering it to outsmart hyper-observant sleuths.

‘I love a thriller, and I’m also annoyingly one of those people who tries to work out the ending of films or plays far too early, so creating one has been great fun,’ said Rewcroft. ‘We started by working backwards: knowing what actually happened, then looking at each character’s relationships, secrets, and possible motives and deciding where we could plant clues without waving a huge flag at them.’

The surrounding bedlam doubles as misdirection, allowing the script to plant crucial details under the cover of a punchline.

‘The comedy actually helps with that because there’s so much chaos happening that we can hide things in plain sight,’ said Rewcroft. ‘Something that gets a laugh might also turn out to be important later. It’s been a really fun process that we’ve built bit by bit. We want the audience to have a genuine chance of solving it, but not at the expense of enjoying themselves. Hopefully they’ll be laughing while quietly clocking who had the motive, means, and opportunity…’

There is also the unapologetic spirit of vintage variety to navigate. Cleland’s source material provides ample room for saucy innuendo, though the writers steer clear of grit in favour of seaside postcard double entendre.

‘Well, let’s just say it’s definitely a show for grown-ups!’ said Rewcroft. ‘We’ve approached the bawdiness a little like an adult panto; it’s much more music hall “blue” than explicit. There are plenty of double entendres, cheeky moments and general silliness, but often the fun is in letting the audience’s imagination do some of the work.’

She conceded that high-minded modesty was never really on the cards.

‘Although when your leading lady is called Fanny, there are certain battles you’ve already lost before you begin…’ said Rewcroft.

In case you were worried, patrons will not have to dust for fingerprints mid-mouthful. Food is served before the curtain or during the interval, keeping dining and deduction neatly partitioned.

‘Thankfully, in true Brick Lane Music Hall tradition, the food is served either before the show or during the interval, depending on which performance you’re attending, so audiences can enjoy the pleasure of their food before The Pleasures of Fanny!’ said Rewcroft.

Turning Diners into Detectives: Conducting the Amateur Sleuths

Once the second corpse drops, the fourth wall is utterly dismantled. Tables are designated as competing investigative units, trading theories and evaluating alibis before submitting a formal verdict.

‘Although when your leading lady is called Fanny, there are certain battles you’ve already lost before you begin…’ said Rewcroft.

Inviting an entire room of diners to play amateur detective is an invitation to chaos. The cast have been drilled to embrace the unpredictable interjections of a lively house without letting the narrative derail.

‘You have to teach the cast to listen rather than panic,’ said Pallister. ‘The audience are genuinely part of the show, so we don’t want every unexpected comment to feel like an interruption. In fact, some of the best moments can come from something an audience member says that you could never have written.’

Pallister likens the required performance style to jazz; the company must know the underlying rhythm intimately before they can riff with a boisterous table.

‘There has to be a strong spine underneath it all,’ said Pallister. ‘The actors know the essential information they need to get across, the clues that have to land and the points in the story we have to reach, so within that framework they can respond to what’s happening in the room. It’s a bit like jazz—you need to know the tune before you can improvise around it.’

That flexibility will be tested across several schools of armchair sleuth.

‘We’ve also had to think about the different types of audience members: the person who desperately wants to solve the murder, the person who thinks they’ve solved it within five minutes, and the person who is just delighted to shout “IT WAS THE BUTLER!” regardless of the evidence,’ said Pallister. ‘The trick is to embrace that energy without allowing one particularly enthusiastic detective to hijack the entire investigation.’

Lending authentic theatrical pedigree to the evening is Brick Lane Music Hall’s founder, Vincent Hayes MBE. Having established the venue in 1992 following years as a variety stalwart—including a stint warming up audiences for Top of the Pops—Hayes steps onto the boards as part of the ensemble, anchoring this pastiche of amateur ineptitude in three decades of endangered music hall heritage.

If you have ever fancied watching rehearsal room politics detonate into murderous musical melodrama—all while nursing a glass of wine and playing Poirot from your dinner table—this weekend is your opportunity to test your wits. The more suspicious amongst you might think this a suitable set-up for an actual murder (by crime fiction standards), but you (probably) needn’t worry…

‘Although now that I’ve written a murder mystery, I feel I should make it very clear that this is all hypothetical and I have an alibi,’ said Rewcroft. ‘Probably.’

Featured Image: The Pleasures of Fanny – provided by show PR