Given that ‘Roller Diner’ is a musical comedy about a Polish woman working in a knackered Birmingham restaurant, chances are you’re wondering how many more seconds it’ll be until you start reading a nuanced dissection of a politically charged satire about Brexit.
Well you’re shit out of luck, pal, because, aside from in the marketing bumf (‘home of the full English Brexit!’) the B-word comes up not even once in the show’s two hours.
I’m not saying the lack of political topicality is to the detriment of ‘Roller Diner’ (writer Stephen Jackson’s play pre-dates the referendum, after all), but the fact that it picks far broader targets definitely is. While it clearly has fun intentions, entire chunks of the script could easily be slipped into an episode of ‘Mrs. Brown’s Boys’ and chances are nobody would notice. And ‘Mrs. Brown’s Boys’ is, of course, the fucking worst.
Ignore the many opportunities for eye-rolling, though, and you’ll find plenty of redeeming features. Performances are all West-End-enaging, the songs are mercifully short and there’s a sprinkling of one-liners that had half the room close to tears.
Judged on its own merits, then, ‘Roller Diner’ is plenty entertaining, with some solid piss-taking of big-ticket musicals – just don’t bring that mate who’s still got the EU flag as his profile picture.