Simon Ward reviews Wilder! at the Etcetera Theatre

This barely categorisable play written by its leading actors Thomas Billiouw and Dany Van Brabant deserves to be seen by a wider audience than can cram into the tiny Etcetera Theatre. The punning title must surely include an homage to the great director of screwball comedy, Billy Wilder, as it demonstrates his kind of classical Hollywood old-fashioned sensibility paired with an utterly madcap plot. Set in a kind of never-never time – the excellent soundtrack is smooth jazz, their telephone is rotary, but there are also mobile phones – it is perhaps best to think of it as a world adjacent to ours.

Billiouw and Van Brabant play husband and wife Gregory and Gloria Wilder, a glamorous couple who spend rather too much of their time fending off the unwanted advances of their neighbours. Most persistent is Martha (Evie Weldon) who longs to be friends with an indifferent Gloria. Equally obtrusive and annoying are the snobbish Phyllis (Jess Vince-Moin) who, with her sidekick Sherryl-Anne (Kgalalelo Thakadu), relentlessly pesters them to join the Newport Village Garden Club.

When not busy side-stepping the neighbours, we get more and more hints that the Wilders have certain proclivities which would definitely be frowned upon if they came to light. More than that, in fact, they would be positively criminal. We are teased into assuming they are into some kind of kinky sex games, and perhaps they are, but as they emerge covered in ever-increasing amounts of blood, alarm bells start to ring.

Slickly acted and directed (Jillian Osborne co-director and Becca Watkin fight director), the play builds to an absolutely shocking but laugh-out-loud hilarious conclusion as the worm finally turns and the bully gets her comeuppance. A word of warning – beware of flying debris in the front row. In this topsy-turvy world we are rooting for our anti-heroes even as we are horrified by their misdeeds. Billiouw and Van Brabant play the central couple to perfection – Billiouw is every bit the matinée idol and Van Brabant effortlessly and stylishly channels the femme fatale. Evie Weldon brilliantly inhabits the endlessly put-upon Martha, and when she gets her chance to shine she seizes it with both hands. Kgalalelo Thakadu is sweetly charming as the neighbour utterly infatuated with Gregory and Jess Vince-Moin is a convincingly appalling neighbour-from-hell.

This is the darkest of dark comedies, and its apparent amorality is actually quite shocking. We are tempted to accept that anything is acceptable if it adds a little spice to an otherwise dully perfect life. And they get away with it using charm, wit and panache. They seem to have a vision of the world where the most gruesome acts can have no consequences if the people committing them are good looking enough. Come to think of it, maybe that is not so different from our world after all. This is a strange jewel of a play – captivating and horrifying in equal measure, defying our easy categorisation of good and evil.

Wilder! played at the Etcetera Theatre, 265 Camden High Street, London NW1 7BU on 4th and 5th December