Simon Ward reviews Cockfosters at The Turbine Theatre

The Turbine Theatre is built into the railway arches next to the new Battersea Power Station development. With the noise of trains rumbling past at intervals and a definite subterranean feel in the architecture, there could hardly be a more appropriate setting for this London Underground-centred comedy written by Tom Woffenden and Hamish Clayton. To be precise, it is set on the Piccadilly Line where two strangers – James (Saul Boyer) and Tory (Beth Lilly) – bump into each other on their long journeys from Heathrow to Cockfosters. Setting itself up as a kind of meet-cute, Sliding Doors-style romcom, it doesn’t take long before a more madcap and surreal energy bursts through. The romcom plot does play out, just surrounded by ever more bizarre interventions, including an audience interactive Tube-based game show. As Tom and Tory continue to insist that they are not together, we know what will happen by the time they reach the end of the line.

Seasoned Underground travellers will recognise the cavalcade of characters we encounter over the course of a single journey across London. There are the American tourists who are loudly and performatively baffled by all the quaint English placenames, and demonstrably incapable of following the logic of the tube map – their disbelief at having to go south on the Northern line is particularly memorable. There is also a nice reversal of expectations when a beggar appears who gets a response far removed from the usual silent rejection by phone-obsessed commuters. As this is the Piccadilly Line, there are, of course, Arsenal fans insisting that everyone stand up, either out of love of Arsenal or hatred of Tottenham. And there is the inevitable busker, though unusually he has an original Tom Lehrer-esque song (written by Jay Foreman, Rich Longdon and Tom Woffenden) consisting of the names of all the stations on the Underground.

And there are more surreal interventions as we move into the past when it was first conceived that the problem of transporting people across London might be solved by building underground. There is a lovely irony evoked in contrasing the original far-sighted vision of a beautiful network operating perfectly with the imperfect reality Londoners live with every day.

The ever-changing stream of characters are played with a maniacal energy by a supporting cast consisting of Charlie Keable, Ed Bowles, Amy Bianchi, Kit Lloyd and Natasha Vasandani.

Underneath the hilarity, there is also a rich seam of genuine affection for the Underground system, and you will learn some things which may, if nothing else, prove useful at a future quiz night. It’s not clear how well this would play in the rest of the country – I don’t imagine that Londoners complaining about the tube would go down well in Manchester or Leeds, for example – but it is brilliantly funny if you live here.

Taking considerably less time than the real journey from Heathrow to Cockfosters, the play manages to squeeze in more laughs than we have any right to expect on a cramped tube train on a freezing cold night in January. And for that we should be truly grateful.

Cockfosters is running at The Turbine Theatre, Arches Lane, Circus West, London SW11 8AB until 20th January