Theatre review: Berlusconi

When I sent my list of upcoming theatre trips to the friends who usually accompany me, Phill said he didn't even need to look past the title of Berlusconi, the musical, to say yes. Ian and Jim both said they also wouldn't have needed to read the blurb to make a decision, but... for a different reason. Yes, this is one of those shows that really could have gone one of two ways, and Ricky Simmonds and Simon Vaughan's musical about the disgraced former Prime Minister of Italy grabs every opportunity to choose the wrong one. Silvio Berlusconi (Sebastien Torkia) was a cruise-ship singer turned building magnate, turned media mogul, turned politician. The latter seems to have largely been an attempt to get political immunity from prosecution from innumerable cases of financial crime and corruption in his companies, but still resulted in three non-consecutive terms as PM.

Berlusconi prides itself on being a completely sung-through musical, but frankly I wouldn't have minded a few spoken-word bridges between the endless onslaught of songs, to provide some semblance of a story. James Grieve's production makes it clear this is all tongue-in-cheek, but unfortunately few of the laughs the show lands are intentional.

Simmonds and Vaughan's music is actually pretty decent, with some tuneful pastiches and a couple of showstoppers. The lyrics on the other hand are often wince-inducing, and if we define the book of a musical as its narrative structure, then this show doesn't have one. There's at least 4 (four) framing devices for the biography, primarily a 2012 trial: Despite being constantly referenced, it's never particularly clear what he's actually on trial for, as words like "bribery" and "money laundering" appear on screens surrounding the stage; eventually we find out he was finally done for tax evasion.

There's also an idea that the story will be told through the prism of three women in his life, namely the prosecutor Ilda (Sally Ann Triplett) who's been trying to get something to stick for decades, the weathergirl-turned reporter Fama (Jenny Fitzpatrick) who's got first-hand experience of how he treats women he employs, and his ex-wife Veronica (Emma Hatton.) They're all a bit too thinly-drawn to really make the intended impact, especially Veronica who we never even see as part of Berlusconi's life, she just emerges fully-formed as a vengeful ex. Next there's the idea that, while on trial, Berlusconi is too busy writing an opera of his own life to concentrate on the case - it's never clear if what we're now watching is meant to be that opera. Loosest of all the themes is Berlusconi using this story to try and refute a comparison to the hated Roman Emperor Tiberius.

Between all this, and a recurring theme that sees Berlusconi as a predecessor to cartoonishly dangerous politicians like Trump and Johnson, it's little wonder if it's impossible to keep track of where in the story we are: It's not so much told out of chronological order, as told without any concept of linear time. At one point Vladimir Putin (Gavin Wilkinson) references the 2018 Salisbury poisonings; minutes later we seem to have jumped back 20 years again to Bill Clinton denying having sexual relations with that woman. My biggest unintended laugh was the lyric "the timeline is now clear" - at no point in the two-and-a-half hours is there a timeline even a Time Lord would find clear. Which, coincidentally, I kind of expected to happen, when Stanley Orwin-Fraser's video design suddenly gives us a purple starfield, which I thought was going to turn into Colin Baker's face.

With Rebecca Howell's choreography including weird puppet-dances and disembodied hands constantly popping up out of trapdoors, Berlusconi seems to be consciously aiming for a "so bad it's good" feel, but unfortunately misses out on the second half of that billing, and the first act is so relentless it had the effect of beating me down into boredom. It probably doesn't help that Lucy Osborne's shallow but very steep set somehow contrives for nobody in the Stalls to have a good view. There are a couple of genuinely good numbers in the second act at least: Berlusconi's weekend being hosted by Putin (who's only doing it to get kompromat on him) being done as a cheesy love song is a moment that finally gets the satirical note right. And on a more serious front, Natalie Kassanga gets a showstopper about the sexual abuse at the famous Bunga Bunga parties; though very good in its own right, this still feels a bit unceremoniously lumped into the general comic chaos, like a token acknowledgement of the women harmed by Berlusconi and the culture he fostered. In any case, a couple of good moments are far from enough to rescue this evening.

Berlusconi by Ricky Simmonds and Simon Vaughan, based on an original idea by Alan Hayling, is booking until the 29th of April at Southwark Playhouse Elephant.

Running time: 2 hours 35 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Nick Rutter.