“A gap year adventure of snowboarding, adventure and a seemingly spontaneous bank robbery thrown into the mix”
If you take a gap year you may have oodles of fun but the chances are you’ll also make one or two questionable choices along the way. You might return from your travels with a tattoo, which you try but fail to hide from your parents. Or you might promise yourself you won’t be foolish enough to go skydiving. Yet you find yourself jumping out of a plane over New Zealand almost as soon as the plane which flew you there has landed.
Some people take this concept to the extreme. In March 2005 two Australian young men were on their gap years working in Vail, the American ski town. One snowy day they decided to rob a bank on a whim, for reasons which have never been fully clear. They made off with $130,000 but their plan was not very sophisticated. For starters they were wearing their name tags from work, took photos of themselves with the stolen cash and casually boarded a nearby ski lift to go snowboarding afterwards. Due to the lack of planning the police knew who they were within eight minutes of their departure from the bank. In court, their only defence was pleading stupidity. The case grabbed attention and made headlines all over the world. One Australian reporter nicknamed them ‘Dumb and Dumber’.
Pleading Stupidity tells the story of these two Aussie boys’ calamitous bank robbery, and the stories left behind in their wake. The production is full of high-energy, physical comedy, frenetic action, and verbatim speech. With a multi-rolling cast, the show recounts the crime and the unbelievable antics that followed. It is now on tour following a successful run at The Pleasance in 2023’s Edinburgh Fringe.
Within the first 30 seconds a reference was made to the 1991 film Point Break, which tells the story of a group of surfers who live a carefree lifestyle of robbing banks and using the loot to go where the waves are. As a big fan of this film, the cast had me on the hook already.
What followed was an interesting 70 minutes which told an enticing tale. It had elements of farce, and at times this was facilitated with solid effect. Four actors took on multiple roles including the robbers themselves, bank tellers held at gunpoint, lawyers involved in the court case, newspaper reporters trying to spin entertaining headlines and various others. It is creative and well put together, but it falls short of other farcical comparables like Noises Off or The Play That Goes Wrong. When you take away the bumbling aspect which many media outlets swooped upon, the real story involved violence and guns. It was not a laughing matter for the innocent people involved, like the bank tellers who did not know the guns were fake. It may have been fun for newspaper folk to come up with numerous puns, but somehow I doubt this incident became a humorous anecdote to include in speeches at either of the robbers future birthdays or weddings. This subsequently stops the production from reaching the heights it aims to. But it is still a fascinating story nonetheless.
High-energy comedy ensemble Maybe You Like It are the makers of the show. Aimed at under 30s, their mission is to produce theatre aimed at younger audiences. This show bridges the gap between comedy and theatre and is paced to match a social-media-literate generation. Maybe You Like It creates collaborative, high-energy stage shows, audio shows and podcasts that aim to entertain and engage audiences with accessible, comedic work.
Co-creator Ellie Iley says: “We’ve created a show for our generation. As young people who consume content incredibly quickly, we want our entertainment to move as fast as we do.”
Producer Jake Morry adds: “This is a show for people who love comedy but don’t think theatre is for them. It racks up the laughs and ramps up the tension, asking what it means to control how your story is told.”
The show continues at the New Wimbledon Theatre until Saturday October 12th before continuing on to venues in Winchester, Swindon, Falmouth, Plymouth and Exeter.