A nightmarish satire on the British class system, this 1964 musical from Lesley Bricusse and Anthony Newley enjoyed a regional UK tour and a Broadway run in its day, but Ian Judge’s revival marks its London debut.
On Tim Goodchild’s garishly evocative circus-tent set, watched by a grinning chorus of sinister female clowns, corpulent upper-class loon Sir (Oliver Beamish) and self-effacing middle-class nobody Cocky (Matthew Ashforde, superb) play a nonsensical game, loosely based on the seven deadly sins, in which Sir dictates the rules and Cocky always loses.
And how: Sir mocks him, starves him, has him beaten and, in the most disturbing sequence, rapes the woman of his dreams. But of course, the worthless toff derives power only from Cocky’s English deference – when a black American stumbles across the game, he blithely breezes through it.
Notes of Beckett, Kafka, ‘Monty Python’ and ‘The Frost Report’ pulse through a creepily comic, visually arresting and superbly performed two hours, which just occasionally takes on the air of an overextended sketch. But fine songs compensate for any thinness: jauntily menacing music hall is the name of the game (I’m sure ‘Put It in the Book’ will haunt my nightmares for years), but any musical which can toss away ‘Feelin’ Good’ (yes, that ‘Feelin’ Good’) two thirds through is worthy of anybody’s time.