'In this way I shall preserve many things that would otherwise be lost in oblivion. I shall find daily employment for myself, which will save me from indolence and help to keep off the spleen, and I shall lay up a store of entertainment for my after life.'

For James Boswell posts please follow the labels on the right.

This blog mainly contains reviews from the Edinburgh Festivals from 2008 to 2010 which I wrote for the Edinburgh Festivals Magazine. These reviews cover everything from comedy to contemporary dance; children's theatre to Handel.


Sunday 23 October 2011

Gingers! the Musical Review

Gingers! the Musical

What do William the Conqueror, Winston Churchill, the Duke of Wellington all have in common? It’s something Napoleon Bonaparte, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington also shared. Elizabeth the first too. All of them, of course were gingers

But does the colour of someone’s hair merit yet another musical? Of course it ruddy does. This is the Fringe after all, home of ‘Porn the Musical’ ‘Bloodbath the Musical’ and ‘Chat! The Internet Musical’. Now comes ‘Gingers! The Musical’, a show which opens by hurling redhead insults at the audience. This playground style humour continues unabated throughout the production.

The musical numbers are about as musical of a bag of asthmatic tone-deaf cats being beaten to death with a pair of cymbals. On a building site. No one song sticks out as even slightly catchy, and the lyrics seem to have been written without any thought whatsoever.

It would be hyperbole if I were to say that this play was in any way racist, although it is worth saying that, in spite of the piss poor moral at the end of the show, it is a musical almost exclusively about laughing at gingers. While this is tame in comparison to some Fringe humour, the play seems to have missed a beat in terms of what actually makes an audience in 2009 laugh. The lazy stereotypes which make up the characters don’t help either.   

I looked at my watch 20 minutes into this and was already searching for some rusty red scalpel to end the agony. Don’t see this unless you are a very close relation of the performers. And even then feign a heart attack as soon as possible. Some people have far too much time on their hands. Neither funny or intelligent.

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