Cleopatra’s Key – The Musical – Bridewell Theatre

Cleopatra’s Key – The Musical continues at the Bridewell Theatre, London until 10 July.

Star rating: 3 stars ★ ★ ★

Lunchtime theatre, unless I’ve missed something, has never really taken off in London, but the cosy Bridewell Theatre, nestled away in a Blackfriars back street, has thankfully kept the tradition alive and it’s a slot that really suits this fun, mini-musical from Hatstand Productions.

At just 45 minutes the audience and cast alike certainly don’t have much time to get immersed in the performance, and a slightly tentative start didn’t really inspire confidence that this would be a lunch break well spent. But, it’s really to their credit that both Lily Lowe-Myers as Charmian and Robyn Cooper as Iras, the two servants of a just deceased Cleopatra, soon turn that around and create a curious, emotionally complex and impressively silly scenario: locked in a tomb with no key to get out and wrestling with their consciences while avoiding the nasty fangs of a poisonous asp probably coiled up in Cleopatra’s cleavage. They’ve never had the best working relationship, one admits, and the cracks soon being to show.

It’s not unusual, of course, for a musical to feature an old queen, but here her covered corpse is a somewhat sinister presence throughout as both servants argue, and burst into both comic and heartfelt song as they mull over the pros and cons of following their mistress into the afterlife courtesy of said reptile.

Fangs, you could say, take an unexpected turn. The tomb effectively becomes a confessional, a place to pour their hearts out, snipe at each other, but ultimately find solace in one another and a feasible solution to their predicament among the pyramids.

Along the way, out of the blue, there’s a fine comic moment (cue spoiler) when a pregnant Iras taunts the ex-Queen with the revelation that the baby she’s carrying is none other than Cleopatra’s ex-squeeze, Mark Anthony.

In addition to playing the straight-talking, sharp-tongued and comically polished character of Charmian, Lowe-Myers is also the writer and director, Omar Sharyar being the composer, and even if some numbers are fairly forgettable, there are also some real crackers, notably ‘Hands of the Gods’, performed with passion and aplomb by Cooper.

According to the programme notes, Cooper and Lowe-Myers, the co-founders of Hatstand Productions, originally met aged three when “they played using a fancy dress box full of props and costumes to help their imagination take them on a journey of adventure”. Little then, it seems, has changed since – this somewhat weird and witty piece set on the Nile certainly made me smile.

Derek Smith

www.sbf.org.uk/lunchbox-theatre