OSCAR at the Crown review – dystopian musical walks on the Wilde side

An immersive party show with “no expectations, no inhibitions”, as OSCAR at the Crown has been repeatedly sold in promo, is not a winning pitch for me. A post-apocalyptic disco musical about a cult worshipping Julie from The OC because she prophesied The Real Housewives of Orange County, on the other hand; so gorgeously camp, so totally unexpected, and it so nearly comes together.

Hosted in an underground club room, the walls are covered in TV screens showing old clips of The OC interspersed with news reports of failed crops and droughts. Dotted around the room on mini platforms, the cast dances to loud thumping electronic pop, dressed in bodystockings and cone bras.

We’re chaotically welcomed to the Crown “where you can be whoever you want to be without any consequence!” The rules are: feel free to hook up in the toilet, and there are no rules. Thankfully, this is all largely ignored by the audience, who spend the evening politely shuffling out of the way of rolling platform stages and galloping dancers.

The pleather-clad green-haired eponymous Oscar Wilde (Mark Mauriello) makes himself known, and his story has just begun when the show is interrupted by a desperate plea from outside the bunker, someone in need of water and shelter.

She’s grudgingly let in, and the merry band of singers and dancers are introduced: While fascism and natural disasters rage outside, these guys, all named after the Real Housewives cast, have created a state-of-the-art underground venue within which they worship “the Nostradamus prophet of our time,” Julie from The OC.

This bizarre premise is explained by a nine-minute song titled “Julie, How Did You Know?”, and it’s the best part of the night.

Unfortunately, they insist on returning to the Oscar Wilde musical, which really only serves the earnest tonal change towards the show’s end. The two competing narratives don’t have much to do with each other, and they could have simply made the musical within a musical from Real Housewives transcripts, to much greater effect.

Casting director Will Burton had the brilliant idea to hire both dancers and singers – it’s rare someone is truly excellent at both, and it’s a shame when casting sacrifices one for the other. On this occasion, while there’s a little crossover, on the whole, the dancers dance, the singers sing, and the show is better for it.

Given the kind of music, it makes sense that it’s a DJ at the helm and not a live band. But I do wish the backing track had been less vocal-heavy. From the live vocals I heard, everyone is exceedingly talented (Elizabeth Chalmers’ big solo “Glimmer of Light” is so perfectly and powerfully sung, I have a moment of wondering if she is, in fact, miming), and they definitely don’t need karaoke-style backing.

I’m grateful that the “immersive” element of the show is more installation than participation: the performers move through and around the audience on small, wheeled soap boxes, but ultimately the distinction between audience and cast is as usual, and there’s little interaction between the two.

Having originated in New York, the soundtrack’s fanbase has clearly taken root across the pond, multiple audience members gleefully singing along with every word. And given the enthusiasm with which the cast themselves deliver this production, I feel like a bit of a party pooper. But as Wilde himself tells us, “Just because the ending’s a mess, doesn’t mean the first 40 minutes weren’t fun.” I might amend that to the first 20, or rather, nine minutes nestled somewhere near the beginning.