Theatre review: Scissorhandz

Another day, another jukebox musical movie parody transfers from the US to London. And where I thought New York hit Titaníque's confidence in going straight for the West End was warranted, LA export Scissorhandz landing at the more modest Southwark Playhouse was probably also wise: Its underlying theme could not be more relevant to the current darkest timeline, but it's just a shame the creatives who came up with the idea couldn't follow through on its promise. Based, of course, on Tim Burton's 1990 suburban fairytale satire Edward Scissorhands - which has already inspired a Matthew Bourne ballet - Bradley Bredeweg's version ditches the "Edward" part to make Scissorhandz (understudy Lauren Jones) a non-binary humanoid creature, built by The Inventor (Dionne Gipson) out of various spare parts. But their mother dies before replacing the scissors with real hands, and Scissorhandz is left alone in her mansion/lab.

Theatre review: Unfortunate

Like Wicked with more clit jokes, Robyn Grant, Daniel Foxx (book & lyrics) and Tim Gilvin's (music) Unfortunate tells a famous fairy tale from the point of view of the villain. But Ursula the Sea Witch is quite specific to one particular telling of The Little Mermaid, so it's important to clarify that this is a parody musical, for legal reasons. Sorry, you'll have to wait a few more decades for her to come into the public domain and get immediately cast as a slasher movie killer. In the meantime Ursula (Shawna Hamic) is here to tell us how she escaped her apparent death at the end of the movie: Quite easily as it turns out, it's not like it was the first boatload of seamen she ever took to the chest. Yes, that's the Carry On level we're at, but contrary to the title we're fortunate in that this is Southwark Playhouse once again staging the best kind of musical silliness.