This 2007 comedy musical options all-singing, all-dancing particles of yeast, swimming on an ocean flooring greater than three billion years in the past. However there are few laughs in a present that belongs again within the experimental petri dish of badly misjudged concepts from which it arose.
It's initially larky as eight figures wearing inexperienced physique socks and frou-frou netting emerge from underneath a white sheet. They is likely to be yeast however they resemble extras from Depraved; one even carries a broomstick, although as an ensemble in addition they seem like historic prototypes of that present’s flying monkeys.
The primary variety of Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis’s rating, Hear the Tune, is catchy and the voices and melodies are sturdy all through. The issue is the garbled plot, the dearth of distinct and attention-grabbing characters and any sense of coherent which means from the ebook and rating, nevertheless exuberantly it's delivered – and there's no lack of dedication from the performers.
A Lear-like king of the yeast cells referred to as Jan the Eldest (Christopher Howell) seems alongside along with his kids, all equally named (Shane Convery performs Jan the Sensible, Stephen Lewis-Johnston performs Jan the Second Eldest, Hannah Nuttall is Jan the Candy and so on). Some scheme to depose him. There are mentions of a traitor of their midst. If that is the primordial ocean, it resembles a Jacobean court docket with single-cell organisms that talk like water-borne Richard IIIs.
There's a subplot in regards to the lack of meals, with references to fatty cells and “muck” being eaten. Little is defined or expanded on. A repeated pun about “rising” yeast grows carrying. A menacing pink hand puppet turns up in one other complicated flip.
Directed by Benji Sperring, the present hums with a self-consciously japey sense of being so unhealthy it’s good till it turns into merely, outrightly unhealthy. The choreography is minimal, repetitive and choked on the crowded stage, with actors shifting their limbs in the identical few wibbling motions to remind us they're beneath the ocean.
Diego Pitarch’s set design consists of dumpy gray bean-bags, which signify rocks, and a round trolley – it's by no means made clear what a trolley is doing on the ocean mattress. Nic Farman’s lighting is usually bilious inexperienced, as if a bucket of slime has been thrown throughout the manufacturing. If that is an try at absurdist theatre, it comes off as a leftfield college live performance gone awry.
Proceedings plunge to an all-time low with the tune Stasis is the Membrane (“that retains all the pieces collectively, by every kind of climate”). Lyrics proceed on this vein, sounding like they've arrived out of the mess of the diluvial swamp themselves. Ardour enters the plotline with the tune Love Equals Ache however it's onerous to elicit who has fallen in love with whom and the way this pertains to the remainder of the story.
Additionally, by no means thoughts the ache of affection. Theatre can equal ache too. No matter good religion there's among the many viewers at the start is curdled after two hours and 40 minutes on press evening in an oppressively scorching auditorium. All of it seems like protracted self-indulgence. Greatest put again within the petri dish and left in an eternity of splendid fungal isolation.
At Southwark Playhouse, London, till 27 August
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