Scissorhandz musical at Southwark Playhouse Elephant – review

Following in the glittery slipstream of Titanique comes another raucous American jukebox musical culled from a beloved 1990s movie. Scissorhandz adapts Tim Burton’s gothic romance about the lonely outsider stitched together in a workshop with fearsome blades for fingers.

It’s a bold, boisterous, sometimes beautiful amalgam of rock cabaret and elaborate queer fantasia but where Titanique is all about the laughs, writer Bradley Bredeweg here tries to have it both ways, seeing this tale of othering, mob mentality and the redemptive power of love as a metaphor for queerness. It starts out as a party (one of the producers is Michelle Visage, and there is an exuberant Drag Race sensibility at first) but becomes angsty; the tonal inconsistency nearly scuppers a show that has a lot going for it.

Firstly, there’s the cast, a mixture of performers from the Los Angeles production and UK-based singer-actors, all of whom field stupendous voices. The song list shoe-horns in an eclectic mix of bangers, some of which, such as “Zombie” by The Cranberries or Radiohead’s “Creep”, you see coming a mile off while others, like Lady Gaga’s “Telephone”, “Let’s Have A Kiki” by Scissor Sisters and Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven Is A Place On Earth”, are a delightful surprise.

One hundred minutes of belting can start to feel a little relentless though, despite the quality of the voices and Arlene McNaught’s splendid five-piece band, but the inclusion of Danny Elfman’s magical theme from the film provides a welcome respite. So does a haunting, downbeat version of Tears For Fears’ “Mad World”, repurposed for the title character and their inventor/parent figure (Dionne Gipson, terrific). Yvonne Gilbert’s sound design is amped up as though the show is at Wembley Stadium rather than a smallish theatre.

In the movie, Johnny Depp’s haunting Edward is first discovered skulking in the shadows but here, befitting the in-ya-face aesthetic of this show, Jordan Kai Burnett’s Scissorhands swaggers on initially as a Hedwig and the Angry Inch-style rockstar, and then relates their story in flashback. Bredeweg’s script stays ploddingly faithful to the screenplay but his staging doesn’t have the flair or resources to realise some of the plot points (a hit-and-run car accident is particularly ponderous). If you’ve never seen the film, you may wonder what the heck is going on.

The passivity of the central figure is easier to convey on film with close-ups etc. but onstage the titular character is upstaged by more flamboyant performances such as the unholy trio of uber-camp housewives (Tricia Adele-Turner, Ryan O’Connor and Annabelle Terry, all sensational) or Richard Carson’s glowering, jealous “himbo”. Emma Williams, in stunning voice, steers a true course between parody and sincerity as Peg, the kind-hearted Avon lady who gives Scissorhands a home, and Lauren Jones is wonderful as her confused daughter, delivering a blistering version of Christina Aguilera’s “Fighter” that is as rousing as it is unexpected.

The cast spends a lot of time clambering over, or sitting on, audience members for no particular reason beyond the fact that there’s not much room on stage. James Connelly’s grungily imposing set of towering loudspeakers backed by appropriately eccentric Burton-esque projections, and gorgeously lit by Adam King, looks fabulous but unhelpfully hems the performers in to a sliver of stage. Accordingly, Alexzandra Sarmiento’s stomping, angular choreography has little room to breathe. It all looks just a bit awkward.

Making Scissorhands non-binary doesn’t add anything to the narrative, and the moment when Williams’s lovely Peg finally uses the pronoun “they” instead of “he” or “she” doesn’t have as much impact as it should. Still, when Scissorhandz lifts off the ground, mostly during the musical comedy moments or when this glorious cast is giving it full vocal welly, it really soars.