Desperately Seeking the Exit, it’s therapy

Peter Michael Marino in Desperately Seeking the Exit at the Leicester Square Theatre. Picture: John Yabrifa

Playing at the Leicester Square Studio, London until May 20.

In 2007, after much publicity, a new musical opened in the West End called Desperately Seeking Susan, scored with songs from the back catalogue of 1970s New Wave band, Blondie. Based on the movie featuring Rosanna Arquette and Madonna in her first major acting role, it tells the story of Roberta Glass, a unfulfilled New Jersey housewife in search of adventure. The musical version featured Kelly Price in the role of Roberta and Emma Williams as the eponymous Susan.

The critics universally panned the new piece, with Charles Spencer of the Daily Telegraph coining the phrase ‘desperately seeking the exit’, but, more importantly, the public stayed away in droves, forcing the project to close within one month at an estimated loss of £1.3 million.

Historically it was one of the biggest flops in the West End in recent years, and for its creator Peter Michael Marino it was the start of some serious soul-searching in order to get a measure of closure on one of the lowest periods in his career. Desperately Seeking the Exit is Marino’s own one-man show, offering an explanation of how his baby developed into such a monster.

No doubt providing a catharsis of sorts, Marino takes us through the process as he experienced it from the original idea, through the workshops, the meetings, the rehearsals, the rewrites in a warts-and-all comedy monologue that goes someway to explain the resulting car-crash that year at the Novello Theatre.

With his background in performance Marino manages to keep his show entertaining, but essentially this is therapy theatre where, despite the elements of self-deprecating humour, he slyly pops several shots at the way the British create musicals.

Admittedly there is much about the process that seems utterly preposterous, from ‘cease and desist’ orders from Debbie Harry over the poster image, through to bolstering ticket sales with the use of on-line shills (the author in chat rooms anonymously ‘bigging’ up the show). The truth of the matter however is that the vagaries of many a musical theatre venture will inevitably look bizarre in retrospect, even when the result is a long-running hit.

Director Angus Jackson and choreographer Andy Blankenbeuhler are gently lampooned throughout and despite the author claiming to love all things British, our culture comes in for a gentle pounding on more than one occasion. It’s all good fun although Marino seems to apportion blame where it will get a laugh, rather than where it might be deserved.

As to the audience, this is a show that will probably be of little interest to anyone except people who saw the original and those intrigued by the creation and processes of musical theatre. At one level, Desperately Seeking the Exit can be considered a British version of Mel Brooks’ The Producers. However, there’s a fine line between satire and psychotherapy, and there are moments of bitterness extremely close to the surface that can make Marino look like some whinging American, bitching about the failure of an idea he had when he got stoned one afternoon.

Paul Vale