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- [00:00]
Ad Voice
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- [00:31]
Hayden
Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan. Fellas, I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.
- [00:39]
Stephen
And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball, but you can call me the Smash Daddy.
- [00:43]
Hayden
And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.
- [00:52]
Stephen
That's right.
- [00:52]
Stephen (continued)
Hey.
- [00:53]
Stephen
Hey. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.
- [00:57]
Hayden
And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. So, spoiler alert, he'll be wrong.
- [01:04]
Stephen
Newsflash, I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy Fanfellas wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:11]
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- [01:37]
Mickey Jo
Now listen, no one was rooting for this to be fantastic as much as I was when this was first announced. I was so excited that some of the greatest writers in the world right now, when it comes to delivering theatrical comedy, were working on a musical for the very first time. It saddens me then to report that Thespian's Mischief's first musical is a missable mythical mess. Oh, my God.
- [01:58]
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Hey.
- [01:59]
Mickey Jo
Welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to those of you listening to this review on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo, and I am obsessed with all things theatre. This gold fabric that I'm currently wearing. Quite cumbersome, I have to be honest and surprisingly warm. But I am thus attired as a deeply professional theatre critic and content creator here on social media. Because today we are going to be discussing Thespians, the first ever fully staged musical. Frank from Mischief Theatre, the unhinged brilliant minds behind the play that goes Wrong, the comedy about a bank robbery. Many other shows, and as they are set to return to the West End this summer with the comedy about Spies. This is their first major foray into the world of musical theatre, despite having done sort of musical adjacent projects in the past, including the often musicalized Mischief Movie Night, their improvised shows and there's plenty to say about this show, its material, its cast, the extent to which it feels like a Mischief endorsed production. I'm going to be sharing with you my thoughts, but as always I would love to hear yours. Thespians has been touring around the UK at a couple of venues since premiering at the Mercury Theatre in Colchester. If you have had the opportunity to see it thus far, let me and everyone else know what you thought of it in the comments section down below. Particularly if you disagree with me. And as always, if you enjoy listening to my review, then make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Turn on notifications so that YouTube lets you know every time I post a new video. Which right now is every single day of my life. You can also follow me on podcasts, cast platforms which is much the same but without the gold lame, which does make me question the value of wearing it in the first place. You can also stay up to date with all of the hundreds of shows I see every year and all of the content that I share about them by signing up to my free weekly substack email newsletter at the link in the Description for now though, it is finally time for me to tell you about Mischief's first ever musical Thespians. So let's begin by backing up a little bit and considering the anticipation for for this show for the first musical from Mischief Theater who have been so brilliantly and pretty consistently successful thus far with not only award winning long running West End shows but also a huge amount of international success. The number of countries that I travel to and I find out that the play that Goes Wrong has been running there in a translated production for a number of years is quite surprising to me and that brand with the dual success of the Goes Wrong type of shows which they also did on television with two seasons of the Goes Wrong show as well as the comedy about shows has been very reliably rewarding to them. In recent years they have explored a couple of sort of off piste projects including the slightly tonally darker Good Luck Studio which also premiered at the Mercury Theatre in Colchester, as well as a couple of sort of solo or smaller breakout projects. And while the group has remained largely collaborative, many of these recent productions have appeared to be the passion projects of individuals and this, from what we can tell, is the passion project of Jonathan Sayer, who has written both the book and the lyrics, with music and also lyrics contributed by Ed Zanders, who has collaborated with Mischief before. And I suspect one of the reasons why this falls down a little may be because it is buckling under the massive weight of expectation. People have at this point grown so fond of the Mischief brand, and the prospect of a Mischief musical invites a lot of speculation, particularly because they have spoofed the local community theater concept before, as well as the casting process, often depicting the same characters, or at least similar archetypes which aren't present in Thespians. This is not musical theater gone wrong. This is not a comedy about musical theatre. This is set in ancient Greece and it spoofs the creation of theatre itself, though not musical theatre, which I think is a very interesting choice. And I was reminded of Something Rotten which also heavily spoofs musical theatre, but is set during the time of Elizabethan theatre in Shakespearean England. And in that show a rival of the Bard who wishes to compete with him, goes to a soothsayer who glimpses into the future and informs him about the art form of musical theatre that is to come, giving musical theaters some entry point into the story. Admittedly, they've already started singing and dancing prior to this. In Thespians we see them in real time, figure out what theatrical performance is and then bring it to the people, which is very celebrated. But there isn't any real acknowledgement of musical theatre. All of the songs that they are singing are non diegetic. And so it doesn't necessarily feel definitive for Mischief to say let's finally do a musical show and let's set it during ancient Greece. The story that they're telling is about the creation of theatre itself and not about musicals. You wonder why they wouldn't want to set something during like the vaudeville or golden age musical theatre era, or Gilbert and Sullivan, for example, even during a period of operatic development during the lifetime of Mozart, when they could be a little more self aware about musical theatre, because Mischief's best comedy always comes from its close relation to the thing that it is depicting. And because we don't acknowledge musical theatre as even existing during this, we can't really make jokes about musical theatre. Instead we're just making jokes with musical theatre, which many a musical comedy has done, but where the comedy about spies injects their usual slapstick, but has everything very closely connected to spoofing spy movies and the James Bond of it all. Where the comedy about a bank robbery does the same thing. The comedy about magic is send ups of all of these different magician and mentalist routines. This one just starts to feel a little bit more generic in terms of its setting and in terms of where they're finding the laughs. Because instead of joking I about theater or about musicals, the laughs are entirely character driven and it becomes about a zany group of friends who could be telling jokes in any kind of a time period or location. I'll explain to you a little bit more about what this plot actually is. We find ourselves in ancient Greece and there is a drought and the tyrant who presides over all of this wants to eschew any sense of blame or responsibility and so announces that there is going to be a sort of a power pageant and different parts of the region will all have to send a group in order to perform a prayer to appeal to the God Dionysus, the God of wine and revelry from my understanding, who for some reason is in charge of the Wren, which is not, for what it's worth a suggestion from me that this is not accurate so much as an observation that the Greeks just had a lot going on. And the news of this obligatory competition at which all of the participants who aren't named the winner will be put to death reaches the small island community of Ikaria with a tiny population from which we meet five individuals including our protagonist Thespis, who is a misunderstood young man. We also meet his very intelligent sister. We meet the island elder Melampus, her closest follower and sometimes slave Atlas, a young man who clearly holds a torch for Thespis as well as another man who gives off major incel vibes and has appointed himself the deputy elder of the island and goes by the name of Adonis, which doesn't necessarily befit his physical appearance and worth flagging at this point that this so clearly feels like a role that Jonathan Sayer would have played or was written around Jonathan Sayer, but he isn't actually playing it in this production because there are no original mischief makers, none of the original company members appearing in this production. There are a couple of mischief alumni. Matt Cavendish, who was part of the original West End cast of Christmas Carol goes Wrong as well as the comedy about spies and the original Broadway cast of Peter Pan goes Wrong in is playing one of two messenger characters who multi role all around the show. They also play entertaining commentators. The other is portrayed by Ali Dart, who has recently joined the mischief world as part of the company of the comedy about spies but who, prior to that, has been dedicatedly involved with what used to be Fat Rascal Theatre Company? I don't know if they even go by that name anymore, but they for years brought comedy musicals to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, including Volvarine, a feminist superhero musical, and their most notable export, Unfortunate, the the Untold Story of Ursula the Sea Witch. And I've seen several incarnations of that particular show as it has been reworked for a more commercial audience from its Fringe origins. Worth pointing out that James Spence, who plays the leading role of Thespis in this production, was seen in the most recent version of Unfortunate. And also worth pointing out that this production is directed by Robin Grant, who I think is brilliant and fantastic. But a lot of those factors are potentially what is motivating this feeling. A lot more like a Fat Rascal show than a mischief show. It feels in many ways like something that you might happen upon at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The fact that the set design is mostly static with a couple of moving columns, but for the most part, you know, only one thing that we're seeing on stage. The size of the band, the extent of the orchestration being a little small, makes it feel like a fringe show as well. The scope of the plot and the way in which they find the comedy. I've thought this before not just about Fat Rascal shows, but also about a lot of comedy comedy musicals that you see at the Fringe. Giggle Mug Theatre are another prolific group who in the past have fallen into the easy trap of finding comedy based on zany characters while not utilizing the more specific comedy of your surroundings, I. E. We could do a comedy about spies, for example, but all of our jokes are going to arise from the fact that the characters we've created are ridiculous. And that is sort of what Thespians does as well. As the plot continues, this plucky group of fearful individuals end up bringing a very new style of prayer, which is more of a theatrical performance. After Atlas says something in passing to Thespis about stepping into his sandals. And it occurs to Thespis in this kind of a light bulb moment, that they could invent acting and portray other people. And he portrays Dionysus much to the celebration of all of those in attendance. This takes us up to the end of the first act. As we return in the second, the group have become hugely popular. Thespis, in particular, is something of a famous star. He has become the most influential figure in ancient Greek society, or to them at the time, simply Greek society. And the tyrant, unsurprisingly, does not take kindly to this, and so engineers a situation in which Thespis grows paranoid about the concept of his friends and peers abandoning him or betraying him, and is seduced into accepting an offer of singular fame and fortune, sowing seeds of distrust and division amongst our characters. It's a similar kind of a plot that we've seen before. The leader of the plucky group of misfits suddenly abandons them when he begins to believe his own hype. It's sort of the Greatest Showman. It's a little Merrily we roll along, actually, and there are plenty of other movies that have done this plot line. Feel free to comment with some examples down below. And even if the narrative is a little generic, even if the comedy is arguably coming from the wrong places, even if it doesn't live up to expectations of what this could have been, none would be a problem if the songs were great and hilarious. Let's continue then, talking about the material and the show's creator.
- [13:01]
Hayden
Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.
- [13:09]
Stephen
And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball. But you can call me the Smash Daddy.
- [13:13]
Hayden
And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.
- [13:22]
Stephen
That's right. Hey hey. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.
- [13:27]
Hayden
And along the way we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.
- [13:34]
Stephen
Newsflash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy Fanfellas wherever you get your podcasts.
- [13:44]
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- [14:04]
Mickey Jo
So this being a musical, we have to have a conversation about these songs. They've been written by Ed Sanders, who I am a fan of. I am a huge fan of all of the creatives and cast members involved in this production. I really think there's a lot of remarkable talent and this has been in development for a long time. I don't want to suggest that there is simply no craft to the composition of these songs, because I can hear the ways in which they invoke and send up musical theater tropes. We have those kind of wistful I want songs. There are also sort of slight Sondheim references interspersed none of that is overt or blatant enough in a way that it would have been in a Book of Mormon, for example, when they're parodying other musical theater songs or a Something Rotten. And it sort of falls between the two, allowing it to neither feel individual, individual and unique, nor like enough of a parody of a pre existing thing. And it isn't bad songwriting. There's a little more wit to be found in the book and in the dialogue than in the lyrics that are sung. And when you go to a mischief musical, I feel like you're expecting these songs to be really wildly, hysterically funny. One of my issues in this is that it begins to stumble upon a mistake I think is made by a lot of contemporary musicals, which is to simply give a character a song at a lot of neatly placed intervals. We enter into a new scene. This character hasn't sung their feelings yet. Perhaps they ought to. And if you go back to the brilliantly written musicals, not even of the Golden Age, but I'm really thinking about the 70s and those moments of breaking the rules and shifting the genre and transforming what musical theatre could be. Sondheim, but also Schwartz. I'm thinking of Pippins and Sweet Charities. And that entire period there were a lot of musical moments that proved very winning and emerged out of nowhere. I'm thinking about the Rhythm of Life, you know, the structure of those shows musically, in the placement of songs. And the reason for bursting into song was never obvious or predictable. There's a song fairly early on called We Are who We Are, in which the characters of Ikaria essentially introduce themselves and talk about the problems in their lives. It's very. It Sucks to Be Me from Avenue Q. It's a way of delivering exposition through song. It's also a precursor to the methodology of their acting process that will be taught by Thespis as he teaches them how to portray each other and consider each other's lives. Very Stanislavski. Needless to say. I wish the lyrical hook for that song were a little more compelling. And when they finally perform their prayer, I wish it were a showstopper. The unusual thing here is that, you know, they're devising something which is brand new and completely different. Think the moment in Sister act when the nuns start singing these uptempo disco arrangements in lieu of their traditional hymns. So they go to Athens and they get ready to perform. They're told they're up next and we see a couple of participants prior to them. However, and you know, I enjoy this fact. They are parodying Eurovision here with these different groups, or at least that's what it feels like. And so you have a couple of different groups that perform in wildly different musical styles, but it's not giving traditional prayer. So it doesn't set up our group from Ikaria to feel like they're doing anything that radical or revolutionary. And arguably theirs is a little bit less entertaining than what we've just seen. Like what we've just seen is out there. And it's deliberately meant to be silly, but it's also very exciting and fun. The onus then is on this song that they perform to really be a show stopping hit. And it essentially is just Thespis coming out and singing I Am Dionysus, I Like Grapes or whatever it may be, and it just isn't impactful enough. And listen, I saw this at the Evon Arno Theatre in Guildford, where a few years before I saw one of their first reopening performances after the theatrical shutdown. And it was mischief performing Mischief movie night. And there were musical moments in that, that and they honestly though improvised, were, I think, a little funnier than the majority of the musical moments in this. I think it's a little long. The first act in particular. There were plenty of moments where I thought we were going to go to an interval and that we would have the competition in the second. So that just dragged on a little bit in terms of how neatly they managed to tie everything up in the second act with this sort of all too quick romantic resolution that wasn't really, for one of the characters, at least at all, suggested beforehand feels like a little too convenient. One of the other hallmarks of a great mischief show is the slight tragedy of many of these characters as well. And they tell us often in this about their dire circumstances and their unfortunate lives, but we don't actually feel the slight hint of sorrow. It's like when you're making good chocolate, because we think of chocolate as being sweet, right? But the bitterness is an important component of the chocolate. And if you were to only make it with sweet ingredients, then it isn't quite right. And there is something about the relationship between slight sorrow and real comedy. You see it in a lot of mischief shows. It can be momentarily heartbreaking for some of these characters before it goes to this ultimate crescendo of comedy. This doesn't do the thing that they normally do when they build on jokes and they get funnier and funnier and funnier, as they're called Back to it doesn't do the thing they normally do with physicality. Robin Grant has done a good job of bringing this story to the stage. It just doesn't feel like mischief and it's telling that, you know. Though it was co written by Jonathan Sayer, there don't seem to be a lot of mischief collaborators on the creative team. Let's talk now about a different creative contribution, which is the design from Jasmine Swan. And I love the way these costumes have been designed. I love the way that the set has been designed. I don't love the use of Generative AI in a handful of props. Equally, it's troubling to find in the program AI generated images of potential costume designs. It makes me question the extent to which genuine creativity went into this design process. And I've enjoyed Jasmine Swan's work on stage an awful lot before. But I don't think that Generative AI has any space in the creative world, has any space in the theater industry. I really don't. I know for a lot of people it can streamline the process. There is some argument to the value of using it as a technological tool in certain instances, but as a replacement for human design and innovation, particularly when this originated at a place like the Mercury Theater in Colchester. I have seen the craft workshop that they have there. I have seen them hand painting their pantomime sets. They have the capacity and the space and the people to help create a handful of prop posters. There is, to my mind, no good reason that we're seeing AI artwork on stage, especially when a company as big as Mischief are ultimately behind this show. Finally, then, as I gracefully step down from my ancient soapbox, let me tell you about the performances of this car.
- [20:42]
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- [20:51]
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- [22:11]
Mickey Jo
So James Spence, who is playing the role of TheSpace, I think, is this compellingly exciting rising star who is going to have a really big presence in the world of musical theater. He is absolutely someone to watch. He's playing a very different type of a character in this to the type that he was in. Unfortunate. And I enjoyed him, I think, a little bit more as an unhinged, zany, supporting comedy character, playing all of these different roles and rushing around and just truly getting to be completely over the top. Because often in a comedy, the person who is having the least fun on stage with their characterization is the sort of charming romantic lead and he plays the swoon worthy, arrogant young man in this very, very well. He's got a fantastic voice. He is still multi rolling, as are most of the cast, jumping into various different little ensemble moments and being like an ancient Greek backing dancer or playing the other roles as needed. And he has a real great grasp of comedy. When a punchline happens to come his way, for the most part he doesn't get to deliver it. Mark Pickering plays sort of the broadest comedy character in Adonis, with a characterization deliberately mismatched to his name and the Persona that he is trying to project and the ego that he clearly carries behind himself. With this slick back, short hair and large, thick framed glasses and a sort of gladiatorial chest plate. He has some very funny material in this script. There's this great gag where he keeps dropping fruit from between his upper thighs and just the very nasal voice with which he's delivering all of his material and being like I am Adonis. Very funny, very, very good, very in betweeners. The citizens of Icaria are completed by Claire Marie Hall. Joyous to see her back in musical comedy after spending so many years with Operation Mincemeat. She has, as we saw in that show, as we heard in that show, I should say, a really fantastic voice. Love getting to hear her belting at the top of her range again. She and Luke Lachman, who plays Atlas for the most part, are the voices of reason and the straight men delivering these kind of wistful solo songs and just trying to kind of maintain order amongst this crazy group. There aren't actually that many truly colorful zany characters though. Melampus, the Island Elder is a little more out there. She has a great moment towards the start of the second act, having told us at the very beginning that she once had this love who was carried away on their wedding day by a flock of birds in the direction of Athens. Once they reached the city city, she spends all of her downtime and every evening searching for him there in a song that is called the Old Man Tango. As she encounters these various old men, some of whom don't match his physical description, others of whom are dead. That's a funny number that I enjoy. The somewhat more extravagant characters in the show perhaps are the antagonists and henchmen played by Rhys Taylor. Rhys plays the tyrant as well as Ali Dart and Matt Cavendish as these two hench people, guards, messengers, pitch perfect esque sports commentators, whoever they need to be. And they are a very funny, versatile high energy double act that would feel very at home in sketch comedy. They're like the presenters of Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live if they were on a sugar high. And Rhys Taylor, though the material only gets really good in the second act, I think is just wonderful as the tyrant. I think another real talent to watch here in a role that is perfectly suited to their skills. As this nefarious panto villain voice lifts up into the higher octaves, this diva energy Rhys has a handful of comic asides as we head through the second act, which are so ingeniously delivered and it's in many of these moments that you start to see a glimpse of what this show could be and the best version of this. And I have no doubt that it's going to develop further and comedy needs an opportunity to hone. I don't necessarily want to just write this off and say, you know, it should have have premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe where the stakes would be somewhat lower. I also think it's not necessarily an all encompassing fix to say this ought to have been 90 minutes. I think there are different issues that this show is facing. One of them is the way in which it just barely aligns with the Mischief brand, as well as its arguable inability to aspire to their very high usual standards. But here is the thing about theatre, comedy and musicals. They all have to start somewhere. They all improve, move through development. I'm intrigued to see how this show grows from its current position and as it continues to tour to more theaters around the country. I am excited to hear what you think of it. Those then have been my thoughts about thespians. Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section. Down below if you've already had the chance to see it. I do still think, in spite of the criticisms that I've listed here, that this is still worth going to check out. I think getting to see a brand new comedy musical from these theater makers locally and regionally in the UK is a treat and I don't mean to suggest that it was scarcely funny or minimally entertaining. You can have a great night at Thespians. I just wish it were better. Thank you as always for listening to my thoughts. If you would like to hear more of them, make sure to subscribe here on YouTube for many more reviews coming very soon. You can also follow me on podcast platforms or sign up to my free weekly substack email newsletter at the link in the description. For now I have been Mickey Jo and as always, I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a Stagey Day.
- [27:29]
Mickey Jo (closing)
For 10 more seconds. I'm Mickey Joe Theater. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day.
- [27:38]
Stephen (continued)
Subscribe
- [27:41]
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- [28:12]
Hayden
Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.
- [28:20]
Stephen
And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball. But you can call me the Smash Daddy.
- [28:24]
Hayden
And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.
- [28:32]
Stephen
That's right.
- [28:33]
Stephen (continued)
Hei hei.
- [28:33]
Stephen
So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.
- [28:37]
Hayden
And along the way we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.
- [28:45]
Stephen
Newsflash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy Fanfellas wherever you get your podcasts do you wish you could
- [28:53]
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