Review: [title of show] at Southwark Playhouse Borough

The answer, is a partial yes and a partial not so much. Four chairs and a keyboard accompaniment keep matters simple, enabling the more convoluted elements of the idea to be explored. Despite the tight timeline, the guys decide to have a crack at writing an original piece and enrol the services of a couple of musical theatre girlfriends Heidi and Susan. There follow verbal exchanges (some online) and roughly 15 tunes about people working on a musical theatre project (if you count the three-sectioned Montage as one). The songs include Two Nobodies in New York, The Tony Award Song, I’m Playing Me, Change It, Don’t Change It and Nine People’s Favorite Thing. The strongest song by a New York mile however, is Heidi’s reflective power ballad A Way Back to Then.

A comedy musical which constantly advertises how clever it is to its patrons, may not be enough to win a more cynical London audience’s heart - or indeed win over any audience outside of NYC. Sure, the four performers are exceptionally well-drilled and their slick delivery of some funny lines is on point, but the one central idea is milked for all it’s worth and actually begins to grate. Even some poor critical notices get dragged into the mix and appear in the show, but it’s unclear whether the writers' intention was to throw down the gauntlet to reviewers, or they were merely trying to convince the world (and themselves?) that they should ignore outside opinion and simply write the show they want to write. Either way, there’s plenty of likeable material on display, but equally, there’s also plenty about which it would be difficult to muster anything other than a shrug, whilst exhaling a barely audible meh!

The sharp running time of 90mins straight through without interval, reinforces the impression that you are witnessing a crisply rehearsed revue of the sort much beloved of Vaudeville. But by the end, there was little in this ‘nice little musical about writing a musical’ which lingered in the mind much beyond the bus journey home.

In this production directed by Christopher D. Clegg, Hunter is played by Jacob Fowler, Thomas Oxley plays Jeff, Abbie Budden is Heidi and Mary Moore is Susan.