'Gutted: A Revenger's Musical' at the Leicester Square Theatre

On Monday night we headed up to Leicester Square Theatre to see a concert version of 'Gutted: A Revenger's Musical', the new comedy musical we first saw in Hammersmith in its pre-Edinburgh Festival run. As Chris commented at the time, it's a cross between 'Kind Hearts and Coronets' and 'Rocky Horror' if such a creature can be believed. Whatever, it's great fun with some rather rude songs and a deeply moral message (ok, that last statement might not be entirely true).

After seeing it at Hammersmith I decided I'd love to see it in a proper production so quickly booked tickets to the one-night-only Leicester Square Theatre production but this was to be a concert version of the show. So the actors were there going through the motions, but no costumes or sets and the stage was filled with a 20-piece orchestra rather than the 3-piece backing band we had at Hammersmith. There was only just enough space to fit the cast on stage let alone anything else. But, you know what? I still enjoyed it far more than the mega-bucks version of 'An Ideal Husband' I saw last week at the Vaudeville. Sometimes seat-of-your-pants works so much better if the spirit is willing and the jokes are sufficiently rude. And, of course, this had one of my favourite ex-pop stars and local boy made good in it playing an ex-pop star, Jim Bob of Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine. We're talking Oscar level performance here.

'Gutted' is great fun, with Colin Hoult playing Mr Bewley (and the other five members of his family, hence the 'Kind Hearts' reference) who marries Sorrow. Unfortunately he seems to have killed Sorrow's parents 15 years ago and she's out for revenge. O dear. That's not a good start. So Sorrow gradually works her way through his family until ... but that would be telling.

Colin Hoult was excellent as the main (and related) characters and so was Michael Legge as the Vicar putting lots of oomph into it. The Penny Dreadful's were good fun as the ghosts in the first half and the police in the second half. I was less impressed by Isy Suttie as Sorrow whose voice didn't sound right for Sorrow. And, of course, the cast was bolstered by a genuine pop star in Jim Bob who gave it a sprinkling of magic as Buddy Stardust.

I have to say I would much rather have seen a properly staged version of the play but the concert version put a smile on my face. What more can I ask for? There was a Q&A after the performance but I was too tired to stay to listen to it. Hopefully there will be more productions of the play and I aim to be there - it's great fun and quite daft and a good use of an evening. Well done people! And the photos are courtesy of DiamondGeyser on Flickr.