Figaro: An Original Musical - Review

London Palladium, London

**

Music,lyrics, co-book and co-created by Ashley Jana

Directed, co-book and co-created by Will Nunziata

Jon Robyns and Cayleigh Capaldi

Much like an expensively wrapped trinket, Figaro is a show that has been lavishly cast and is beautifully sung. Unfortunately however, the words that are sung are trite and shallow, leading to an evening of wondering how on earth the likes of the gifted Jon Robyns ever signed up for this.

Robyns plays the titular villain, a Svengali-like man whose character never progresses beyond a cliched fusion of the Phantom of the Opera melded with Gypsy’s Mr Goldstone. Channelling his inner Phantom, Robyns/Figaro leads country-girl Sienna (a name repeated so often in an early number in the show that one could be mistaken for thinking they were at an Ultravox gig) to fall for his charms, and everything goes downhill from there. Equally hampered by the show’s ridiculous plot, Sienna struggles to establish herself as a credible character - her one redeeming feature however is that she is played by the sensational Cayleigh Capaldi whose voice has to be amongst the best in town.

Young Cian Eagle-Service (taking a night off from being a brilliant Oliver just down the road) partners the similarly youthful Sophia Goodman in a kiddy double-act that could almost drown in its own sugary sweetness. That being said, both Eagle-Service and Goodman are simply exquisite in their singing and in their acting through song. These kids are truly talented stars of the future.

Also on stage in supporting roles are Aimie Atkinson, Ava Brennan and Daniel Brocklebank, all adding a twist of shallow soapiness to the evening’s melodramatics but equally, all of them displaying powerful, flawless vocals.

Ashley Jana’s instantly forgettable songs (the show’s musical numbers are not even listed in the programme - always an ominous sign) lurch from ballad to anthem and back again, all underscored with an overemphatic and heavily amplified bass line.

A great deal of money and effort has clearly been spent on mounting the show on London's prestigious Palladium stage - if only similar energy had been devoted to its writing. Rarely have such awful songs been sung so amazingly.

Runs until 4th February

Photo credit: Fahad Alinizi

Six The Musical - Review

Arts Theatre, London


***


Music and lyrics by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss
Directed by Lucy Moss and Jamie Armitage

The cast of Six The Musical

Beheadings are brutal and barbaric, whether they occurred 5 months or 5 centuries ago. And yet, with heads jauntily skewed, grim grins (albeit momentarily) and hand-held mics tightly grasped, the cast of Six The Musical make light of Henry VIII’s murderous misogyny. 

Judging by the response to the show, both in its sold-out Edinburgh run and now at London’s Arts Theatre, the passage of time appears to condone such laughter. To be fair there is occasional light shed on some of the unpleasantness associated with being one of Henry’s six wives - witness the sinister hands that grope and paw at Aimie Atkinson’s Katherine Howard. But for the most part the evening serves as a high-volume, sugar-coated history lesson, aimed at todays reality-TV entertained masses and not having to make them think too hard.

If the show’s moral compass may be adrift, at least its technical standards are excellent. Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss have written some sassy songs, Carrie-Anne Ingrouille’s whip-smart choreography is well drilled while Tim Deiling’s stadium-inspired lighting only adds to the rock gig feel of the piece.

One might have hoped that today’s Woke generation of theatre creatives might have delivered more from a musical treatment of one of English history’s most monstrous monarchs, although at (thankfully) a little over an hour long perhaps the creatives recognised the attention span of their target demographic.  Ultimately though the same old metropolitan hypocrisies prevail, with the show serving as little more than shallow entertainment for its prosecco-fuelled audiences. Marlow and Moss clearly have great technical and creative potential ahead of them – Six The Musical however deserves to be filed away in the history books, and soon.

Runs until 14th October, then tours

Photo credit: Idil Sukan