Fool’s Gold
28 March 2025
Barons Court Theatre
3.0 out of 5.0 stars
Fool’s Gold is currently playing at the Barons Court Theatre, with one more show coming up today, 29 March, so be quick if you’re planning to see it.
A cemetery in the middle of the night, David is following his chosen profession of “covert excavator”, waiting for his dig partner Johnny. He is planning for this to be his last job for boss Tony, before retiring from a life of night time grave robbing with a nice little financial cushion to start over with. But instead of his friend, an energetic stranger in a Hawaiian shirt shows up, claiming to be sent by Tony to replace Johnny, who has moved on to a better place. The stranger is upbeat, unusually cheerful, and full of incessant chatter about grave digging techniques and Take That. A bit startled and worried, David is stressed and rattled by this unexpected development, but things get more tense when a marathon runner and a ghost show up during the precarious digging operation.
The show is a fast-talking, convoluted dark comedy chock full of plot twists and surprises. There’s a good flow to the conversations and plenty of laugh-out-loud moments in the absurd mayhem. It does feel a bit like the writer ran with the story a little too much, not keeping in mind that the audience does not know how the plot will develop and not giving quite enough to play with in the first half of the show. The plot does become clearer and initially confusing comments end up feeling more like foreshadowing as the action fully gets going, so with a little editing work, everything could be a little more cohesive to grab the audience’s attention from the get go.
Humour is quite dark and at times very misogynistic, though this is coming from a very dodgy character, so not too out of place. Mayhem and madness reign in this casually comedic little show, including Scooby Do-esque chase scenes and hilarious disguises. A great start for the show that could become amazing with a little more development.
