★★ | Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens
CREDIT: Will_FrostSaucy Jack and the Space Vixens is billed as an inter-galactic disco extravaganza that explodes all around you. Well something exploded, or backfired. Think all-singing, trying-to-dance Battlestar Galactica meets Mad Max, throw in some glitter, silver lamé and a few other odds and sods from another solar-system’s secondhand dressing-up box.
In amongst magnetosphere-of-madness is a wannabe poet cosmic Cyclops, a zodiac German doctor impersonator, a metallic-headed basque-sporting Medusa with two klingons in tow – the vixen trio. And thrust into the starlight as if she just landed from another planet, Chesty Prospects (Sophie Cordwell James): imagine Cheryl Fernandez-Versini trying to pull-off ‘fierce’, with a live vocal performance wearing a studded bra and stardust. Light years from close.
Confused? So were we. There’s a serial killer, and these super-fashion crime-fighters from a groovier galaxy with a mission to fight crime and liberate the universe harnessing the Power of Disco. Or, a dark-matter Rocky-Horror-esque disco blended with a whole sphere of amateur cabaret.
The production lifted off quite well but gravity kicked in and it landed flat on Uranus. The concept is fun but the stage time could have been halved, and for some, more rehearsal time added.
Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens plays at The Kingshead Theatre until 21st May
