Brexit stage left for musical mayhem
THERESA May is a witch, Michael Gove is a camp creep, Nicola Sturgeon is a hag, and Jean-Claude Juncker is a drunken, belching Eurocrat.
No one comes out of David Shirreff’s new satirical play about the EU referendum – Brexit: The Musical – with credit.
It is the first in a slew of forthcoming films and plays inspired by the referendum. They will have their work cut out to match the wit and pace of this musical romp, performed at London’s Canal Cafe Theatre.
Shirreff dishes out ridicule in equal measure to the Leavers and Remainers.
His Theresa May, played by Reggie Seeley, is a wooden Maggie Thatcher tribute act. She parrots lines from her speeches, along with a peppering of Churchill – to the indignation of Boris Johnson, who claims he wrote them, not Winston.
When May, Nicola Sturgeon and Andrea Leadsom appear as Macbeth’s three witches, Johnson, (James Sanderson), cries: ‘Let them hail Boris the king!’
A squeaky voice splutters: ‘What will I get?’ It is the panto villain, Michael Gove (Chris Vincent), portrayed, in Shirreff’s words, as a ‘creepy Kenneth Williams’ – the Carry On comic actor, raconteur and wit whose fame peaked in the 1960s and 1970s.
Shirreff’s David Cameron (Stephen Emery) is a weak toff who trembles with fear every time that German Chancellor Angela Merkel opens her mouth.
Deluded Cameron boasts he has done well at an EU summit with the words: ‘Who said I couldn’t negotiate my way out of a paper bag?’ Boris replies: ‘Er, it was me I think, Dave.’
Nigel Farage (Jack Badley) also goads Cameron, singing: ‘I have to say I’ve had a laugh, speaking for the other half, the folks that don’t think much of Eton and other schools where chaps get beaten.’
Brexit Ministers Liam Fox and David Davis constantly bitch at each other. When Fox claims: ‘I’ve nothing to hide’, Davis jibes: ‘That’s a first, Liam.’
The ‘Three Brexiteers’ – Johnson, Davis and Fox – later chant: ‘We haven’t got a clue what to do and where to start, we need to show by and large that someone competent is in charge.’
Like so much of the play, it is hard to tell where fact ends and fiction begins – a reflection of the background of Shirreff, who is a former journalist with The Economist.
He says: ‘Brexit is great material for ridicule. In one scene, Boris raps with Putin in the Kremlin.
‘It hasn’t happened in real life yet – but it could.’