Wedding Band: A Comedy by Charlie Baker

Having worked variously as comedian, actor and wedding singer, Charlie Baker's offering this year—a comedy play about a wedding band—could be regarded as his magnum opus. Eschewing his usual combination of standup with the occasional croon, Baker has turned his hand to writing, drawing from his own experiences to construct an hour-long romp behind the scenes on an unseen couple's big day.

Although the premise seems promising—the nuptial foundations are fitting for a "comedy of errors"—the humour of the piece rarely rises above the pedestrian. A lot of the laughs come from repetition – one of the more memorable jokes is that Craig, the keyboardist, repeatedly tells us that he's hungry. Other bits of dialogue feel like they're leftover standup material wedged into a script.

The queerest element to the comedy is the way in which all of the problems that arise for the characters are dealt with: with situation-based comedy, the buffoonery of the protagonist would normally cause the situation to snowball into some farcical grand finale, yet here, the problems simply resolve themselves and the protagonist escapes any harm. A comparison would be if, upon remembering the sensitivities of his guests, Basil Fawlty decided not to mention the war.

The play is, by no means, irredeemable: the performers (especially the two minor characters) put in some sterling performances that lift even some of the dodgier material to an enjoyable standard, and the one musical interlude receives rapturous applause. But, if Baker is to flourish as a comedy writer, he must first learn to tell a story.