University Challenge musical is truly buzzing
Verdict: A team of winners
THIS exuberant musical celebration of television’s national treasure, University Challenge, is truly buzzing.
Emma Hall, who co-wrote the book and lyrics, was surely inspired by her half-sister Rebecca’s appearance in the 2006 movie version of David Nicholls’s rites-of-passage novel.
She and Charlie Parham, who also directs, have pumped up the romcom into a hyperactive cartoonish nostalgia fest, filled with big hair, cringeworthy fashion and thumpythumpy ersatz-Eighties pop music.
One particularly sweaty number puts the terrifically energetic ensemble through a physical — and verbal — Jane Fonda-style workout.
Adam Bregman plays earnest Brian, the Essex brainbox with ambitions, since childhood, to go to Bristol University, use words such as ‘utilitarian’ and get his finger on that UC buzzer.
There’s comedy at Freshers’ Week where Brian encounters braying rugger-buggers and falls for Alice (Emily Lane), a luscious Sloane boasting about her Gap Yah when things ‘got hairy with the carabinieri’.
The show loses five points for the booming music, which drowns out too many words. But the performances are wonderfully winning.
Mel Giedroyc enjoys herself far too much as Irene, Brian’s caricature of a mum, packing his red Y-fronts and begging him not to become a communist as he goes off to university.
Later, dressed as a wannabe Mrs Thatcher, she handbags the contestants into shape. (Perhaps she was playing to the gallery of former Bake Off mates Sue Perkins and Mary Berry, as well as Dawn French, at a raucous opening night.)
The style is old-fashioned, the set flimsy, the pace frenetic — but the feelgood factor is irresistible.
I predict we’ll be seeing more from this talented team.