Money to Burn

My critical colleagues (and many of the bulletin board posters on this site) have said that Money to Burn was bad. They were wrong. It is far worse than either they described or I could possibly have imagined.

The only thing you can say for it is that it is presciently titled, since money to burn is what the producers clearly have. Who could have imagined that this witless, charmless and pointless self-billed new “musical comedy thriller” was in any way musical, comic, or thrilling? It is none of those things.

It’s more like a cheap, cheesy cabaret with a minute plot, “inspired” by the likes of Jeffrey Archer and Jonathan Aitken finally meeting their comeuppance, but even those real-life aristocratic bounders never went as far in the ignominious stakes as plotting to bump off their wives so that they could cash in on their fortunes.

No doubt author, composer, lyricist and director Daniel Abineri thought he was being frightfully witty and satirical in creating the louche character of Lord Oliver Justin (OJ to his friends) who, down on his luck and with gambling debts to pay, decides to do just that.

I’m not normally of a fragile disposition (and if you are, skip the rest of this sentence), but a number that rejoices in the chorus “Wank me, spank me, gag me with a hankie,/ ah, that’s what I like”, sung by OJ to the S&M prostitute he hires, had me hiding behind my programme in embarrassment. Poor Peter Blake – a veteran British musical actor – who has to sing this while parading the stage with his modesty only protected by a pair of ladies underwear, gives it a level of desperate commitment way beyond the call of duty.

You will, however, be spared this sorry spectacle if you only see the first act, as many audience members are electing to do, since this epic moment of musical madness doesn’t occur until the second. Not since The Fields of Ambrosia (where “everyone knows ya”) has there been an original musical as woefully misconceived as this.

In the bleakly amateur circumstances, only 21-year-old Camilla (a Fame Academy finalist from the original BBC series) emerges with any credit or dignity as a smoky cabaret singer. I’m sure the rest of the cast would consider it a kindness not to be named, and since I’m in a charitable spirit, I won’t.

– Mark Shenton