★★★★

Gareth Davies and Charlie Garber return to the Old Fitz and face the post-apocalypse inMasterclass 2: Flames Of The Forge.

Things go disastrously awry when Gareth attempts to power an entire city’s energy grid via the greatness of his acting and ends up wiping out every living thing on the planet. Lonely, he decides to revive his greatest character, Charlie Garber, who was beneficently cut loose to pursue his own dreams at the end of the original Masterclass, restaged at the Fitz early last year.

But informing Charlie that the end of the world has occurred proves tricky. Charlie seems freaked out, even repulsed, by the discovery of Gareth’s life-extinguishing power, and more than once Gareth is forced to kill his creation/best mate and start again with a more impressionable one.

Finally Gareth lands upon a new tactic: they’ll make a pact never to go outside until they’re ready to perform a brand new actors’ masterclass. Everything is going smoothly until Charlie sneaks into Gareth’s memory chamber for a spot of late-night masturbation. Looking for a titillating memory of Gareth canoodling with Helen Hunt on the set of Twister, Charlie instead sees his numerous deaths played out in gory detail.

Masterclass 2 is just as funny but blacker and more deliriously cosmic than the original. Charlie responds to the revelation of Gareth’s perfidy by glassing him, then tying him to a chair and leaving. He returns thousands of years later, nodding, “You’re right, there’s nothing out there.” David Stratton makes an amusingly deadpan cameo as himself, pontificating on the transcendent power of Gareth’s craft. It’s funny but he’s right: these two are formidable talents.

Masterclass 2was reviewed at the Old Fitz on Thursday January 14.

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