Review by Steve Bennett

The latest in the increasingly crowded genre of Subject:The Musical! began life at the Edinburgh Fringe two years ago, when it attracted the predictable ‘Fury as…’ Daily Mail headline.

But there’s absolutely nothing offensive about this good-natured romp – which is precisely where it fails. In an age when real terrorists have exploding underpants, you need to go some way to top the actual Al Qaeda for farce, and this cliché-ridden combination of weakly drawn characters, simplistic plot and unimaginative score has a blandness the spirited cast can’t overcome.

The story, such as it is, has weak-minded naïf Sayid unwittingly recruited to an inept terrorist cell where his fellow foot soldiers are a screamingly camp queen and morose Chechnian. Meanwhile, a cynical American TV reporter spreads unfounded panic about the jihad threat – a point made in typically unsubtle fashion when her idealistic sidekick asks her bluntly: ‘You make it sound like it’s our job to make everyone feel afraid’. And Sayid’s sister Shazia goes to France for what you might call a romantic subplot, but that would be to grossly overstate the limp scenes which that comprises.

Then there are the minor characters – where writer Zoe Samuel has aimed for cartoony, but ended up on the lazily familiar. There’s Jacques, a Frenchman who’s arrogant and lascivious (why not go the whole hog and give him a garland of onions…) and the large-rumped, gobby black woman called Shaniqua who works on airport security.

But more than such lazy stereotypes, it infuriated me disproportionately that these scenes, with metals and liquids confiscated, took place AFTER the flights. It’s not a big deal, I guess, but shows the kind of sloppiness that pervades the writing, even after a rejig following the Edinburgh run.

You don’t care about any of the characters or their stories, which wouldn’t be a problem if the production was packed full of high-energy silliness, daring bad taste or sharp gags, but it’s not. Instead, this is a pale imitation of The Producers, in which the closest we get to a joke is the terror cell leader greeting his superior on the phone: ‘Obama! Loved the new video…’ Very 2001.

The enthusiastic cast do their best to inject some razzle-dazzle into proceedings, but they’re martyrs to the stale lines. Richard David-Caine stands out as a natural physical comedian – though he didn’t need to do the John Cleese silly walk to prove it – while Yannik Fernandes impresses as the fresh-faced and optimistic Sayid. And, like all the cast, he can certainly sing.

But the tunes they’re lumbered with largely sound like every other spoof musical number you’ve ever heard – the sort of melody the pianist in an improv group might tap out to broadly and instantly indicate the genre. The Jihad Jive is a toe-tapper, and to a lesser extent I Wanna Be Like Osama; but catchy numbers are thin on the ground.

If you’re expecting Jihad: The Musical! to be edgy, or even particularly extravagant, I’m afraid you’re infideluded.

Review date: 15 Jan 2010
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Jermyn Street Theatre