EDINBURGH FRINGE MUSICALS
Cash In Christ! / Tony!: The Blair Musical
/ Jihad: The Musical / Stonewall / Failed States
Various venues, Edinburgh
August, 2007
*** / *** / *** / **** / *****
The Edinburgh Fringe is no stranger to controversy, but this year the
most controversial shows all seem to have turned up as musicals. Van
Badham and Jonny Berliner's Cash In
Christ! is a mock-evangelical rally in which pastors Bob and
Fanny Comfort explain how Jesus wants us all to become rich so that we
can a) smite the infidels more forcefully and b) give hefty chunks of
that wealth to the Comforts. Badham's writing shows its usual zestily
sharp tongue, but also the lack of focus which can beset her work.
This year boasts not one but two Tony Blair musicals. Tony! has the slightly jazzier
title (that exclamation mark), and also a piece of casting that
inadvertently generated the funniest moment of my day, when the show's
opening speech was greeted by cries from a couple of old ladies of "We
can't hear you!"... at an actor who is in fact the son of "quiet man"
former Conservative leader Ian Duncan Smith. That absence of projection
seems to be hereditary. The show is efficient but largely toothless,
with no real chronology, a stock roster of characters and a purely
homophobic portrayal of Peter Mandelson.
Far sharper is Jihad: The Musical,
which treads a fine line deftly. It satirises extreme Islam's
oppression of women, gays etc without criticising the religion itself,
and balances this with an indictment of American selfish ambitions, as
female news reporter Foxy stumbles on the story of young dupe Sayeed,
too dim to realise he is being groomed as a suicide bomber. It includes
lines such as Sayeed fretting about his poor ability at target
practice, "I couldn't hit the broadside of a Bamiyan Buddha" and cell
leader Hussein flattering his niqab-clad comrade with "Have you lost
weight? Who can say?" But its scenic structure is too bitty – set-up,
number, blackout; set-up, number, blackout – and the performance style
is a rather self-satisfied cartooning.
In many ways, I was fondest of the prolific Rikki Beadle-Blair's
jukebox musical Stonewall. It
does not address its subject square-on, but rather weaves an imagined
human-interest tale among a number of gay guys and drag queens in 1969
New York, showing the systemic hassle that eventually led to the
Stonewall riots. It is rather at sea in the large Pleasance One space,
and has too early a slot at teatime; it needs a more lubricated and
vocal mid-to-late-evening audience, but those hours on the Fringe are
increasingly monopolised by comedy. Its songs are neither original nor
performed live: scenes are punctuated by sequences of lip-syncing to
1960s girl-group songs, principally from champions of teen romantic
ambivalence The Shangri-Las. But it has heart, commitment and
exuberance to carry it over virtually all its shortcomings.
However, the laurel must go to Failed
States. Desmond O'Connor and Andrew Taylor's musical was lauded
on its première last autumn in one of London's most obscure
fringe theatres, and deserves a far wider audience. This is,
incredibly, a musical indictment of Britain's anti-terrorist laws.
Protagonist Joseph, an American trading in the Middle East, is detained
without charge on his return to London and interrogated to the point of
his own madness and his family's disintegration. Its book and songs
alike are ambitious and largely achieve their goals in a 70-minute show
that ranges from outrage to satire to bittersweet romance, with a
discreet Kafka motif for good measure. It is an extraordinary rendition
– pun fully intended. I would love to see it transfer to London's
Trafalgar Studio 2, not least because it would then be within the
protest exclusion zone around Parliament.
Written for the Financial Times.
Copyright © Ian Shuttleworth; all rights
reserved.
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