Seeing bad shows obviously doesn’t stop after you leave Edinburgh. It’s an occupational hazard of being a critic, I know, where no (mental) health and safety laws exist as far as entertainment thresholds go to be reached or breached. But sometimes a show is so bad that you wonder how it ever got near a paying, let alone a critical, public, especially one that comes under the umbrella of an artistically-led organisation.
I’ve been pondering whether to name, and duly shame, the organisation concerned. On the one hand, the work in question is so raw, shapeless and formless that it truly defies criticism, and it is produced by a young company – who are evidently just a notch up from youth theatre – whose efforts I don’t want to crush completely. It’s difficult not to sound patronising by suggesting that giving kids a forum for their artistic (and political) expression is a noble ambition, but subjecting the paying public to it is another matter. So, on the other hand, I would be failing in my journalistic duty if I don’t warn readers off from spending their time (and money) there.
So here goes. Admittedly, the omens were not good going in to BAC’s Studio 2. The title may give you pause: “Hitler Wrote 20 Pop Songs… Have You Heard them?” And the inauspiciously named company presenting it call themselves Theatre de Cunt. Obviously they’re setting their stall at being provocative. But the programme suggests loftier ambitions: “Their work is a blend of satire, politics, theatre, humour, street ballet and hip-hop”, it says. “Their aim is to create a new style of musical theatre to inspire a new audience.” And it therefore compels you to ask if it succeeds in any of those ambitions. Sadly, the answer is not at all.
BAC’s press office admittedly tried to fend my attempts to see it off at the pass, suddenly announcing it was being re-branded as a comedy sketch-show rather than a theatre one; but even on those more limited terms, it fails since it is simply excruciatingly free of laughs, even though there are lots of attempts at tasteless comedy about terrorism, racism, mental illness, immigration and oral sex, amongst other things.
BAC’s programme – which advertised it as “a fast, aggressive satire on the state of the nation” from “a terrifyingly young company” – has unduly promoted it as part of the kind of innovative work BAC is famous for supporting. But it does no one any favours to expose it in its current tasteless, shapeless form; it either needs to be kicked into shape or kicked into touch. BAC are famous for their developmental process with artists; but this show and these performers have been shown long before they are ready, which on the current reckoning, they may well never be.
