I wasn’t the only one desperate that Viva Forever! would be a blast. There were hundreds of us eager to leap to our feet and holler through the Spice Girls’ greatest hits as a band of teenage lookalikes led the tribute on stage. Didn’t happen, I’m afraid. The Spice Girls are not in this show. I’ll say that again. The Spice Girls are not in the Spice Girls musical. Jennifer Saunders has penned an arch and scabrous spoof of TV talent contests like Pop Idol and The X Factor. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Even celebrity culture has its epochs and phases, its stratifications and its correct chronology. The Spice Girls date from 1996. Pop Idol didn’t appear till five years later. In slebs-ville, that’s centuries. And the Spice Girls’ singular ideology is not merely neglected, it’s entirely traduced. They overthrew their original management team and took control of their careers. Pop Idol and its descendants support the opposing dogma that sovereignty resides with the bosses and not with the performers.
The action starts on a trendy houseboat in west London occupied by a trio of familiar characters: a boozed-up mum, a past-it hanger-on and a rebellious teenage girl. Yes, it’s Ab Fab in the Twitter age. The girl, named Viva, seeks fame as a member of a band with four girls in it. I’ll say that again too. Four girls in the band. (Can the producers not count?) They apply to a talent show named Star-maker, which is ruled over by a crew of warring egomaniacs led by an acid-tongued witch called Simone. This role is done with tremendous style by Sally Dexter but the rest of the satire is predictable and toothless.
Above all, it’s not what the audience wants. We were kept waiting until 9.30 p.m. before the girls’ first hit, ‘Wannabe’, was played. Two hours too late. At the final curtain call, the band rattled through a few more favourites. Phew! Thank God for that. We leapt up and began the singalong we’d been desperate for all evening, but after a couple of minutes the fun was over and we were shoved out into the freezing night. Viva Forever! wants to be Mamma Mia! but its storyline isn’t cheerful and catchy enough, and the Spice Girls’ back-catalogue hasn’t the strength and range of Abba’s. The appetite for a proper Spice Girls musical — featuring real Spice Girls lookalikes — remains strong. What’s needed is a simple upbeat celebration of their amazing story. God knows how they bungled this so badly.
Dominic Cooke’s tenure at the Royal Court ends in April. Having done amazing things there, he brings his reign to a conclusion with a lap of dishonour. That means a new play by Martin Crimp. In Europe, Crimp is honoured, respected and widely performed. In Britain, he’s just subsidised. The hard-pressed UK tax victim has stumped up for this one.
The Republic of Happiness starts with a family of witless berks swapping insults at Christmas. Uncle Bob and his wife show up and they add more braindead witter to the sourness. After 20 minutes of chippy twaddle, the entire house collapses. Chairs appear. The actors sit down and make demented comments at the audience for an hour and a half. Curtain. The end. Crimp writes with an inscrutable, misanthropic eloquence, copied entirely from Pinter, but he doesn’t bother knitting his cocky cynicism into a storyline. The result is a stream of smug provocation that dares us to participate in his childish hatreds rather than persuading us to give them serious consideration.
My attention moved from the well-drilled performers on stage to the unrehearsed reactions of the audience. This was interesting. To begin with, shocked explosions of mirth greeted Crimp’s lorryload of small-minded piffle. After a few minutes, chortles gave way to sighing, eye-rolling, yawning, watch-checking, texting and dozing. Theatre-goers are usually swift to chastise neighbours who tap at glowing screens during plays. But here, complete strangers were nudging those in adjacent seats and asking if they’d received any interesting messages. For 117 minutes Crimp’s drivel-geyser sprayed on and on. No interval either. Probably a wise move. An escape opportunity would have emptied the house for the second half.
I find it rather sad that these actors have no better outlet for their talent than to repeat this bothersome inanity eight times a week. They might consider atonement. Carols at a nearby hospital, perhaps. Or some Yuletide vagrants might be invited in to avail of the theatre’s warmth by spreading out across the many unoccupied seats. Two hours’ kip guaranteed.
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