Critics blitz Miss Atomic Bomb

Michael Coveney, WhatsOnStage

★★

"Everything about this keen-to-please ersatz American musical… played out in the mushroom cloud of the nuclear tests of the 1950s, is strenuous, efficient, well drilled and designed – and curiously flat, unfunny and flair-free."

"The songs have no zing or provenance and sound as though they've been made on a computer, or compiled on a "how to write a song" study course; there's not a single moment of lift-off, melodic surprise or harmonic twist from start to finish."

"There's some decent writing around the characters of Lou and Myrna, and Lipkin and Tate make the most of it, which ain't all that much."

Patrick Marmion, Daily Mail

★★

"Miss Atomic Bomb fizzes and gurgles but never really detonates."

"Tate’s Utah accent drifts into Aussie, but she does at least hold a tune, even if her red top and green dress with Wonder Bra pushing her assets over the shoulder is more garish than a nuclear explosion. Her comic gifts are otherwise underused, but she makes the best of toe-curling gags."

"The cast strive to make it work, but they need more conventional weapons – and a plot capable of causing tremors."

Lyn Gardner, The Guardian

★★

"There’s a kernel of something potentially intelligent and interesting here, particularly on the themes of personal and political betrayal. But the show goes for a 1950s screwball comedy style and misses it not just by a mile but by an entire exclusion zone."

"There are characters whose behaviour is driven entirely by the demands of the plot, and there is an increasing air of desperation in both the pastiche songs and Catherine Tate’s accent, which frequently leaves Nevada and goes on long walkabouts in the Great Victoria Desert."

"Some of the lyrics are smarter than the plot might suggest, but even at its best this is just sweetly silly."

Ann Treneman, The Times

★

"Sorry to go all nuclear on you but I’m afraid that the clue is in the title here. Miss Atomic Bomb is not such a blast after all."

"There are times when this British production, written by Adam Long, Gabriel Vick and Alex Jackson-Long, does come together but they are all too rare."

"Tate has an accent (Australian? US trailer trash?) that would stop traffic. Andrews, as Candy, can sing but I felt sorry for her trying to carry off a plot that not even a dead sheep could rescue (so baaaa-d)."

Holly Williams, The Independent

★★

"The problem is that too much of it really isn’t funny. Adam Long, Gabriel Vick and Alex Jackson-Long’s writing tends to balloon like a mushroom cloud; it’s just too obvious, too broad, too much."

"Still, it’s a slick show, with plenty of pizzazz and some fun performances – Florence Andrews is winning as Candy, Catherine Tate is absurdly OTT as her fashion-obsessed sidekick, and Simon Lipkin makes for an endearingly hapless hotel manager. Love interest Dean John-Wilson has a superb voice."

"But it’s hard to switch emotional gears if the whole show is a great big knowing wink, and accordingly we cannot care about these characters."

Mark Shenton, The Stage

★

"I'm afraid we were only a few songs in and I was already losing hope. The satire is lame, the songs desperately derivative. Though it has been in development for some five years, what has fetched up at the St James still feels like a very early draft."

"Its chaotic and formless comic structure lacks purpose, polish and point. And the best efforts of a hard-working cast can't redeem it."

"Bill Deamer's co-direction with co-author Adam Long gives it an efficient sheen, but ultimately Miss Atomic Bomb is that sad species of musical: a bomb in almost every way."

Dominic Cavendish, Daily Telegraph

★★★

"If you can have musicals in which cats sing about the journey to the Heaviside Layer or toy-trains 'come to life', then I think you’re allowed to have this bonkers, knowingly zany show rooted in a strange-but-true moment of American madness."

"Even though it’s overlong, I have to confess to experiencing a steady rumble of grudging admiration that often erupted into outright laughter."

"Oddly, Tate, the celebrity anchor of the evening, almost sinks it with an American accent that strays Australia-wards and an aura of pained participation – she ought simply to enjoy the transient silliness of it all."

Miss Atomic Bomb runs at St James Theatre until 9 April.