Henry Lewis and Henry Shields on making mischief in 'The Comedy About Spies'

The creators of the award-winning comedy The Play That Goes Wrong are brushing up on their Bond for new show The Comedy About Spies.

When drama students Henry Lewis and Henry Shields formed Mischief Theatre with Jonathan Sayer in 2008, little did they know that the comedy troupe would go on to become one of the most successful in recent theatre history. Playing their alter-egos Robert Grove and Chris Bean in the fictional Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society has allowed the pair to construct a series of slapstick ‘Goes Wrong’ comedies. Kicking off with The Play That Goes Wrong – now something of a West End institution – Mischief has also scripted Peter Pan Goes Wrong, Magic Goes Wrong (a collaboration with US magicians Penn & Teller) and Christmas Carol Goes Wrong (a new version of which is heading to the Apollo Theatre this December), as well as moving the format into TV with The Goes Wrong Show. Other work includes The Comedy About a Bank Robbery and Groan Ups.

I met with Lewis and Shields at the Duchess Theatre – the venue that jump-started their West End careers – to talk about their latest play, The Comedy About Spies. The pair have been working on the project for five years, so the script pre-dates the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Shields emphasises that the play is set in Soviet-era Russia when the geopolitical map was very different: “I’m sure audiences will appreciate that we’re not trying to pass any kind of commentary on the current situation.”

What inspired The Comedy About Spies?

Henry Shields: The original idea was based on something that really happened during the Cold War. There was an incident where the Soviets tunnelled underneath the US Embassy and were listening in, and it turns out the Americans were doing a similar thing at the same time and the two tunnels were very close. I can’t remember the exact details, but we just thought it was ripe for a farce.

What kind of research did you do?

Henry Lewis: The show is set in 1961, so we’ve looked into what was going on in the Cold War at that time – the Berlin Wall went up that year so it was a particularly high point of tension. I watched a fantastic documentary called The Bomb and the Cold War – basically nine hours detailing American-Soviet foreign policy from the end of World War II onwards. Shields: I started working my way through all the James Bond movies, just as an exercise. I didn’t enjoy it! I think I got up to number 11 – to Roger Moore where they get worse. Connery was good and From Russia With Love is the only one that really works in isolation – the others are actually a bit weird.

Tell me about your writing process – how challenging is it to write as a group?

Lewis: I think for comedy it’s good because you can laugh about an idea and get a sense almost straight away about what’s funny and what’s not. There’s nothing particularly fancy about our process – we do a bit of planning, come up with a shape then look within that story for opportunities for fun routines. We start working on the dialogue, then it’s lots and lots of reworking and editing. We did a workshop last year where we built a bit of the set so that we could do some of the more physical stuff – the bits that are harder to get a grasp on during a reading.

Were you surprised by the huge success of The Play That Goes Wrong?

Lewis: It continues to be a surprise. We just celebrated 10 years in the West End – this from a show that started as a tour and was originally expected to run for maybe eight weeks in the West End. We knew that Nica Burns [producer and co-owner of Nimax Theatres] believed in the show and has been supportive throughout, so that’s been amazing.

Why do you think the Goes Wrong format has proved so popular?

Shields: It’s universal because it’s slapstick and we know it works in lots of different languages in countries all over the world. It’s pure commedia dell’arte clowning. And without wanting to boast, I think it’s just done really well. We’ve put a lot of time into it and the current iteration of The Play That Goes Wrong took us two years of running and changing and rewriting of different productions. We were working on it constantly – every line, every moment has been drilled to death.

What has been your favourite character to play?

Lewis: I’ve enjoyed them all in different ways and for different reasons. I’ve enjoyed playing Robert Grove and have been doing lots of Mind Mangler over the last couple of years, which has been fun.

Shields: I think my part in Spies is my favourite because I’ve played a lot of Chris Bean-type characters – strict and very much the foil that the other characters work off. In this show, I get to play the silly, naïve character, which is lovely – it’s more fun to play a bumbling idiot!

Are there spy novel and film references in the show that the audience will pick up on?

Shields: I hope so – there are definitely quite a few James Bond references, a bit of Mission Impossible and some Pink Panther-type things.

Lewis: But the story itself is probably more John Le Carré in that it’s an ensemble of spies rather than focusing on just one character. I don’t think it’s giving anything away to say that one of the characters is auditioning to be James Bond, so there’s lots of fun related to that.

What would you say is Mischief’s USP?

Lewis: I think escapism is a big part of it – and the importance of laughter, especially when we live in such a mad world these days. But I also think our mission statement is being serious about silliness – we don’t take ourselves too seriously but we take comedy seriously.

Shields: I don’t really see our type of comedy emulated, which surprises me because I think it’s quite broad. It’ll happen one day – someone will come along and do what we do, better. And that’ll be the end of it!

Book The Comedy About Spies tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: Henry Lewis and Henry Shields of Mischief Theatre, (Photos courtesy of production)

This article first appeared in the April 2025 issue of London Theatre Magazine.