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Review: Fun At The Beach Romp-Bomp-A-Lomp (Southwark Playhouse Borough)

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Review by Daz Gale


⭐️⭐️

 

Usually the only castles you find at a beach are sandcastles, but this particular beach finds itself in Elephant and Castle as a visit there at the moment will take you to Fun At The Beach Romp-Bomp-A-Lomp, currently bathing in the light at Southwark Playhouse Borough for its world premiere production. Would it be able to live up to its title and be a fun romp or would it be as uncomfortable as getting sand in your crevices?



Describing itself as a cross between Grease and Squid Game, Fun At The Beach Romp Bomp-A-Lomp is set on a hot day at the beach where a competition is taking place that could change lives forever as a group of boys and a group of girls navigate falling in love with each other as they battle to be crowned King or Queen of the Beach, but as the events become more deadly and with only one able to survive, is there any chance of a happy ever after in this show?

 

Written by Martin Landry and Brandon Lambert, Fun At The Beach is unashamedly stupid in its approach, playing up and parodying all classic tropes in beach musicals, recent Netflix series and jukebox musicals altogether. With the thinnest of plots, this is all done with not so much a subtle wink to the audience but almost grabbing them and shaking them with force. While the idea behind it has potential, the execution is deeply flawed. What seems to have been missed in the creation of this show is that it takes a lot of intelligence to pull off a truly stupid show. The obvious comparison here is Police Cops The Musical which, while being as stupid as it gets, had a great level of care and skill into pulling off the humour. This same level of care is nowhere to be found here in a haphazard approach which feels underwritten and underdeveloped.


 

While there are admittedly a few funny lines sprinkled throughout, other moments fall flat as the creators hope the absurdity of the situations and the parody nature of it alone will be enough to elicit laughs. Sadly, this is not the case. I may have had a few chuckles but my sides were not in danger of splitting. Far too many moments fall flat with a ridiculously overlong few minutes where one character says the word “What” repeatedly far outstaying its welcome, minutes after it stopped being funny. Theatre is subjective and so is humour but moments like that let the quality down.

 

The idea behind this show was to make the worst jukebox musical ever, with a note in the programme effectively dismissing all jukebox musicals as being the same (something I strongly disagree with but that’s an issue for another time). For the songs here, Brandon Lambert sends up a number of songs from the 1950’s and 1960’s in a way that pokes fun at their lyrics but feels instantly familiar. ‘My Girl’ becomes ‘My Woman‘, ‘Big Girls Don’t Cry’ becomes ‘Mature Women Don’t Whine’, ‘The Locomotion’ becomes ‘The Ocean Motion’ and ‘R-E-S-P-E-C-T’ becomes ‘A-P-P-R-E-C-I-A-T-I-O-N’. You get the idea? While it always raises a smile to realise what song they are parodying, that’s as far as it goes with the humour missing throughout. The exception to this is in a funny parody of ‘The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss)’ called ‘It’s In His Peck’ which sees the singer get increasingly agitated with the questions throughout.



The show includes the pretty on-the-nose line “Even the stupidest musical can survive if it has one decent song” and the songs here are one of the strongest elements, though 11 o clock number ‘There’s No Song’ isn’t quite the big-hitter they were clearly hoping for. It also features the most random finale ever with the inclusion of ‘Rockin’ Robin’ – a reference to the random and increasingly overdone bird noises throughout that left me feeling anything than chirpy. I get that the idea was to make a deliberately bad musical, but the mistake was making one that wasn’t enjoyable.

 

The cast of eight are clearly having fun in the roles with deliberately caricature and one dimensional characters. Highlights among the cast include Janice Landry who delivers  the most consistent and comical performance of the night in her turn as Chastity. Tom Babbage delights and gets some of the most memorable moments as Joe, while his love interest Mary Joe delivered what I consider to be the strongest performance of the night as Ellie Clayton maximised her opportunities and stole every scene she was involved in.



While the writing didn’t quite reach the levels I had hoped for, the direction didn’t successfully utilise the always versatile space at Southwark Playhouse Borough as well as the majority of other shows I have seen there. A few visual gags and slapstick moments peppered the show but there were too many times where nothing seemed to be happening, with not enough attention being given to how best to bring the humour and tell the story. Francesca Jaynes choreography improved this slightly, with some fun parodies of other routines making performances bigger and bolder – her deliberately lazy choices in ‘The Ocean Motion’ being my personal favourite of the night.

 

I didn’t go into Fun At The Beach Romp-Bomp-A-Lomp expecting a show that was going to change the world. I knew from the title and description that this was going to be a silly show and I was looking forward to that. You only need to look at some of the jokes and puns I put in reviews and on social media to get the sense of how stupid my sense of humour is. I was rooting to love this show even half as much as I did Police Cops but unfortunately this was not the case. The show does have potential though but needs to tighten up its writing and find more ways to explore how best to bring the humour. I’m sure this musical will have its own fans, but for me personally, I had as much fun at the beach here as if I had been stung by a jellyfish on a cold and wet day. Not quite a complete washout as yet though so I would be keen to see how this show develops in the future. 



Fun At The Beach Romp-Bomp-A-Lomp plays at Southwark Payhouse Borough until 22nd June. Tickets from www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk  

 

Photos by Danny Kaan

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