When in the first ten minutes of the show there have already been several jokes about vaginas and a song essentially about paedophilia, it quickly dawns that few sacred cows are going to be left untipped. As it was, Bad Musical made Frankie Boyle look like Peppa Pig. In between its taboo-breaking songs, it managed to send up the whole genre of musicals, in particular the type of musicals rushed out for the Edinburgh Fringe, in such a ruthless and realistic manner that at some points it almost wasn’t clear if it was a satire or things were actually going catastrophically wrong.
Bad Musical is a pastiche of traditional musicals. The running time has been cut, we are told, from three hours to fifty five minutes and the lead actress has left, to be replaced by a balloon on a stick. Sound effects are delayed or mixed up, musical interludes stutter and stop and whole scenes are skipped, all to great humorous effect. So Johnny Everyman, from Littletown, is told he should be the next Prime Minister, the stage darkens, we are told 25 minutes of running time has had to be cut and hey presto, guess who’s Prime Minister? The cast make this trick work, with their constant calls for lines and scowls at the lighting staff.
It’s the songs where the performance comes to life. Apart from the satirising element, such as minor sandwich chefs getting five minute interludes, Bad Musical excels when the humour is, if not close to the bone, then right on it. Who would have thought that a jolly piece extolling the virtues of the BNP (complete with placards going ‘send them home’) could be pulled off and pulled off well? Well-acted and performed from start to finish, this is something you should get yourself to see as soon as possible
