Cheesy Cheesy Catchy Mousey – Camden People’s Theatre, London

Writer: Mark Daniels

Director: Edwina Strobl

Cheesy Cheesy Catchy Mousey is a play with a pleasingly ridiculous title which aims to be pleasingly ridiculous in itself.

Sam (Helder Fernandes) is an eighteen-year-old who asks himself a simple question, ‘do mice like cheese?’ He asks his friend AJ (Nkhanise Phiri), his mother (Anya Sayadian), his PE teacher (Ben Keenan) and a curmudgeonly cheesemonger (Jacob Lovick) but gets no definitive answer. He then makes the mistake of looking on the internet, finding enormous heaps of information, none of it very relevant, and even larger amounts of argument, abuse and bile. There’s also an interactive element, with the audience voting on various questions throughout the first half.

Describing itself as an absurdist comedy, there are some laughs had at the simplicity of the question and the lack of an answer. There are fourth-wall gags, checking-the-script gags and a running joke where Lovick, the grumpy cheesemonger is presented as a last-minute cast addition and doesn’t understand the play he’s in. It turns out the audience interaction element may also be a joke, with the votes having little or no impact on the clearly locked-in script. (A script that then comments on how locked-in the seemingly improvisational parts are).

The personifications of the various media and social media sites are written and played very broadly. Twitter is a foul-mouthed contrarian and the BBC panders to an imaginary audience member called Jeremy. At one point here’s a protracted argument between the blokeish Daily Mail and a wimpy The Guardian. Many of these scenes play like sub-par Monty Python skits, with two or more characters bickering about something as Sam yells ‘Do mice like cheese?’ The audience needs to be prepared to hear that question a lot throughout this play.

As such Fernandes has a rather thankless task. For much of the first half he has to repeat his question again and again while the other characters fail to answer it. In the second half, there’s an attempt to shift towards seriousness and he has to make a sudden switch to angst over his inane quandary which leads him to take drastic actions. Fernandes gives it a good shot, but it’s a tone shift that would be impossible for any actor.

The rest of the cast gets to have more fun playing a variety of characters. Each one has a moment to be fun and engaging, particularly Keenan’s insecure PE teacher or Phiri as the Metaverse, stumbling about in some goggles. However, each of the cast also plays some truly irritating characters and many of the scenes became nothing but noise.

The most irritating part of Cheesy Cheesy Catchy Mouseyis that if Sam simply picked up a children’s non-fiction book about mice at the very beginning, he’d have had his answer immediately. Of course, it’s not a play just about cheese, as the second half ponderously unpacks, with each character having their own idea of the real theme. Then again it might be about cheese. It might be about nothing.

The fact is, mice are ambivalent to cheese and will eat it for the calories if their preferred nuts and grains aren’t available. They have the reputation for loving cheese because, in the past, cheese was stored in a way that mice found easily accessible.

Runs until 25 June 2023