Flop! The Best Songs from the Worst Musicals - Wine Bar Teviot - Review

What makes being a musical theatre fan so wonderful is that everyone has different opinions and that everyone likes different things, but even so there are some things that we can all agree on and that is that sometimes there are musicals that are just bad. They can be badly received by the critics, be a complete lose at the bank and run for only a handful of performances, but hidden in a pile of terrible can be a little glittering gem; one song that redeems a bad musical. And here we have the enthusiastic Arthur Hull to talk us through them, to take musical theatre super fans on an adventure through the good songs that save the day.

In Flop! The Best Songs from the Worst Musicals, Hull invites us into a laid back cabaret of musical theatre numbers from some shows that perhaps should never have seen the light of day. From the wacky Moby Dick, the questionable yet somehow appreciated Diana The Musical (perhaps the only musical to ever flop before opening after a filmed version was released ahead of the Broadway opening), King Kong and Carrie with even a nod to movie musical Grease 2, Hull composes a love letter to theatre that shows both great passion for the artform and his great comedy skills.

The storylines of some of these musicals may be questionable, here's looking at you Grease 2, but you cannot deny that the songs are bops, if a little repetitive in the case of King Kong, a moment that had the audience in absolute stitches, and ultimately every moment is smile inducing.

And even though you could happily enjoy the music either way, it is Hull that makes this show such a stand out. He is instantly likable, charming, fun, funny and completely and utterly passionate about musical theatre, jumping from piano to loop, performing numbers with greatly impressive vocal talent and even showing off some wonderful circus skills to introduce a section on Spiderman Turn Off The Dark, perhaps one of the biggest flops around. He also impresses with his crowd working skills, be he climbing over seats to find his leading lady for the Grease 2 song, enlisting someone to play a gorilla or even laughing with us when at the performance I attended a stumble of a team member on the sound desk caused him to lose track of where he was in his Cats number, all whilst entertaining us with anecdotes of his own trips to the theatre in Australia as a child.

If there is any show at this Edinburgh Fringe that will have you begging for one song more, it is this one. It feels like a musical theatre themed party, having you both dancing in your seat and joining in, laughing and cheering throughout. For the musical theatre fans exploring the fringe, Flop! The Best Songs from the Worst Musicals is a crowd pleasing treat of a show that will have you smiling from ear to ear.