The larger difficulty is the choice of source material. Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure is not sufficiently familiar to carry the same immediate comic recognition that a more culturally embedded play might have provided. Consequently, the play within a play occasionally feels less substantial than the Noises Off-style machinery dismantling it. The chaos is very funny; it simply feels as though it might have landed even harder had the audience been more invested in the thing being destroyed. Yet the production’s handling of its murder mystery is a particularly clever piece of theatrical misdirection. For much of the first half, the murder almost slips from the audience’s consciousness entirely. We become so absorbed in the amateur company’s increasingly chaotic attempts to stage their production that we momentarily forget a murder is even afoot. It is an impressive achievement: the comedy and character dynamics are sufficiently engaging to allow the central mystery to recede without losing the audience’s investment. When the murder finally comes to the fore, it is handled with confidence, drawing the audience into the investigation through an interactive format that has already been carefully established. Rather than feeling like a separate show bolted onto the comedy, the mystery grows organically out of the world we have spent the evening inhabiting. 

The performances, however, are consistently committed and excellent. Shannon Rewcroft gives Fanny the perfect combination of vanity, insecurity and diva-like authority, creating a deliciously recognisable amateur-theatrical leading lady. Lucy Reed’s Mary Garden is an equally effective foil: jealous, sensual and gloriously self-aware, with Reed finding a comic physicality that repeatedly draws the eye and a fantastic voice to match. Jack Pallister’s director is a particularly enjoyable piece of theatrical observation, an amalgamation of countless directors whose artistic conviction is matched only by their inability to communicate with anyone around them. Watching his stress build is highly entertaining. Ross Tomlinson, meanwhile, gives perhaps the evening’s most endearing performance. His comic vulnerability wins the audience over completely, with his Irish dancing proving an unexpected highlight. Annabelle Fage’s stage manager is an exhausted presence amid the mayhem, although her appearances occasionally feel more functionally inserted than dramatically motivated. When her opportunity finally arrives, however, Fage grabs it with both hands and delivers a real moment of vulnerability. 

Andrew Robley brings hilarity and appropriately excessive theatricality to Nun the Wiser/Madame Anita Tinkle, although these moments could have benefited from a little more pace. Vincent Hayes, who created Brick Lane Music Hall, is hugely enjoyable as MP Drew Peacock, playing the character with exactly the charm and absurdity required. His transition out of character to address the audience carries a particular warmth - a moment where the history of the venue and the fiction of the production briefly collide.