Footballers’ Wives: The Musical at Assembly Rooms – Edinburgh Fringe review

This musical – with a score by Kath Gotts (who wrote Bad Girls: The Musical) and a book by another Bad Girls graduate Maureen Chadwick, who came up with the 2002 TV series on which it is based – is a conundrum.

It has some terrific, punchy songs, performed by a strong cast, and pacy direction by Anthony Banks that keeps the action bubbling nicely. But it seems stuck in the midfield. It shoots off stories and barbs in all directions, but never quite scores.

This is partly because football itself has come so far. Women’s football was somewhat underappreciated (to say the least) when the WAGs ruled. All the attention was on wives and girlfriends and not Euros-winning female players. The Kardashians have arrived and trumped any fictional representations. A musical based around Footballers’ Wives feels horribly dated.

That doesn’t stop it being fun, however. There is something deliciously retro about a storyline set at Earl’s Park FC, where star player Jason feels threatened by the arrival of a handsome, samba-singing Brazilian rival and his scheming wife Tanya sets about protecting his position – and their lifestyle – from all-comers.

The characters are cartoonish but enjoyable. There’s also Chardonnay, a glamour model, who is planning her own wedding to dim-witted Kyle as a Disney-style fairy story and has only just been dissuaded from adopting a Snow White theme complete with dwarfs, and hometown girl Donna, whose boyfriend gets caught up in a three-in-a-bed tabloid sting.

The whole thing jogs through its 80-minute running time with a certain amount of flair, immensely enlivened by a cracking performance by Ceili O’Connor as Tanya. High of heel and sharp of wit, she teeters through the action like a latter-day Lady Macbeth, singing like a dream and generally slaying all comers with the sheer force of her personality and her will.

There’s also a lovely, melancholy number for Leesa Tulley’s put-upon Donna – “I’m just a girl who loved a boy” – which hints at a depth and a character-development that the rest of the musical lacks. It’s lively, but brittle.