Theater Camp
Cert: 12A| ★★★★✩
Out Friday

Dear Evans Hansen alum and all-round Broadway legend Ben Platt stars in this relentlessly funny mockumentary about a rundown theatre camp in upstate New York.

The film is co-directed by Nick Lieberman and Molly Gordon, Claire in the excellent TV series The Bear. Gordon also stars alongside Platt as lifelong best friend and fellow theatre camp teacher.

As they do every summer, staff at a disorderly and barely functioning theatre camp, are preparing to welcome kids from all over for another fortnight of high jinks and thespian angst.

After the camp’s indomitable founder Joan falls into a coma, her clueless crypto-bro son Troy (played by Jimmy Tatro) is tasked with keeping his mother’s pride and joy in the black.

With financial ruin looming,Troy joins forces with Amos (Platt), Rebecca-Diane (Gordon) and their chaotic band of teachers and students to come up with a solution to save the business.

Meanwhile, having spent the last 15 years in each other’s pockets, cracks start to show in Amos and Rebecca Diane’s friendship, when one of them is made an offer they find hard to refuse.

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A scene from Theater Camp (Photo: Searchlight Pictures)

We have come to expect awkward pauses and cringe-inducing showboating in these productions — think This Is Spinal Tap, First in Show and even The Office — but I’m glad to say Gordon and Lieberman deliver a fresh and charming take on the genre.

Their film is bursting with hilarious one-liners and is frequently bolstered by some great performances, especially from Platt, Gordon and co-writer Noah Galvin, Platt’s real-life partner, who stars as timid stage tech Glenn.

Equally cheering, The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri is note perfect in her “straight man” role as the imposter who has doctored her CV to become the camp’s newest teaching addict.

For her part, star of the charming comedy Together Together Patti Harrison makes for a great villain du jour as the conniving investor, plotting to take over the camp in order to close it down.

The mockumentary is in safe hands with this talented team. And at a breezy 90-minute running time their film is exactly what you need to ward off the end-of-summer blues.

Yes, the gags are predictable, but I loved and each and every one. More, please!