06th Aug2013

Wag! The Musical! – Theatre

by timbaros

Wag+the+musical

The website of WAG! The Musical promises “one of the most extraordinary theatrical events of the year”. And sure enough, it is one of the most extraordinary theatricals events of the year – a very bad one at that!

Expecting a story of the Wives and Girlfriends (WAGS) of footballers, with their fake boobs, lavish spending, and bling jewelry, what we get instead is a musical with very bad music, a story with a very bad script, and a show so bad it does not even deserve to be staged.

WAG! The Musical is the story of two girls who work at a cosmetics counter in an unnamed store, and many of their customers happen to be WAGS. Of course, the two girls Jenny (Daisy Wood-Davis) and Sharon (Amy Scott), aspire to be more than just cosmetics girls. One of them (Jenny) wants to run away with a footballer, who unfortunately happens to be married. Sharon finds herself in a volatile relationship with a man whom she thinks she loves, but is told by Jenny to ‘dump him’ because of the way he treats her. She leaves him and finds romance closer to home, with Pete, the store cleaner who also happens to be a musician (a believable Chris Grierson). Olivier Award-winning (1984) American actor Tim Flavin is the store manager (Mr. Frank) in it is a performance that is dreadful. His character is so one-dimensional and predictable, and it is clear that he fancies men, but at the same time, he grovels before his rich, female customers. It is embarrassing.

In WAG! The Musical we are ‘treated’ to a fashion show arranged by Mr. Frank, who has invited all of his WAG customers. They sashay around the stage, with big hair, tight fitting dresses, and pouting lips so large one wonders if they have just eaten lemons.

The selling point of the show (if there is one) is that it casts two real live WAGs: Liz Cundy, ex-wife of former Chelsea defender Jason Cundy, who plays a presenter (and who looks like she has had way too much Botox), and Pippa Fulton, partner of Brentford Striker Clayton Donaldson, who plays a customer spending lots of money, no doubt mirroring her actual life. Both of these woman cannot act, and they definitely cannot sing. They, along with the rest of the cast, don’t have much to work with from a script that is almost invisible, and it is up to comedienne Alyssa Kyria, as a Greek WAG, to sort of save the show. She has the best lines, doing a stand-up routine, but it’s almost as if her act is another show altogether.

It is questionable why the writers (Belvedere Pashum, with music and lyrics by Grant Martin, Thomas Giron-Towers and Tony Bayless) set a show about WAGS at a cosmetics counter in a department store. There are so many different ways they could’ve written a show about WAGS to make it funny and entertaining, but as it is now, it is a laughable production at best. Newspaper critics have declared this the worst show of the year. I would go so far as to say this is the worst show of the decade.