As a premise there is so much you can do by transposing Anne Frank’s struggle into the Big Brother house, but Greggs the Musical have definitely missed the boat.
Instead of presenting a dark and possibly highly intelligent comedy about human endurance and survival Jill Peacock and Edwina Lunn have been landed with a series of cheap shots and mixed pop culture references.
It would be wrong to suggest that the duo don’t have their funny moments, as a number of their gags land and their observations of female-to-female attitudes are well made, but it is impossible to disengage that bit of your brain that is appalled at the trivialisation of the Holocaust’s best known victim.
Far from being simple prudishness, this reaction is more down to disappointment, as we occasionally get to glimpse the show that this could have been. Instead their passing nod to themes of enforced isolation, capture and mind-numbing repetition are caught up in a tide of bitchiness, diet jokes and blonde vapidity and lose any subtext they could have had.
There is a definite hint that the folks at Greggs the Musical have the ability to do good, but they’d be well advised to stick to extolling the virtues of bridies than satirising ethnic cleansing.
1/5
Richard Biggs
