Fashion Victim – the Musical – Cinema Museum

Carl Mullaney in Fashion Victim – the Musical at the Cinema Museum, London. Picture: Alex Carr

Fashion Victim – the Musical continues at the Cinema Museum, London until 6 July.

With its catwalk stage and white drapes, one could well expect that Toby Rose’s new musical comedy Fashion Victim – the Musical would be set in the world of haute couture. Alas, the lacklustre plot has its sights set rather lower.

Mimi Steel (Rosie Glossop) is a model who has moved to London from Toronto – a location which is apparently important because it is repeated so often, despite the script and Glossop’s performance both portraying her as a stereotypical Californian valley girl. Her ambitions to climb the social ladder receive a fillip when she meets and starts dating French stallion Cedric (James Wilkinson), but she is more interested in using their status as a celebrity power couple to promote her own fledgling business.

The potential for satire of those celebs who treat their relationships as extensions of a PR machine is ripe, but it would need more care and attention than this production provides. Instead, we have a plot revolving around competing charity bracelet designs – low quality sweatbands with letters sellotaped onto them – a series of lacklustre cameos from model/actress Camilla Rutherford, and dance numbers from an ensemble whose choreography is, one hopes, a pastiche of low-quality commercial numbers.

It is not helped that the two supporting roles, of Mimi’s friend Chloe (Aimee Barrett) and her new “boyfriend”, effete reality star Tarquin (Arron Blake), are written so sketchily that it’s hard to see any semblance of character in either. Nor do either ever get to explore their motivations, or their relationships with Mimi, through song. In a musical with only five named parts, it is noticeable that only three do any singing. Of these, Glossop’s Mimi takes the lion’s share, and to her credit carries off her numbers with a dignity that the lyrics do not deserve.

Offering no little redemption is Carl Mullaney. His character of Jake Spangle is part Emcee, part Fairy Godmother, part narrator and part rival to Mimi’s designer ambitions. And while he brings a breath of fresh air, it is this overloading of roles that further signifies the problems within the structure of this musical. Mullaney saves every scene he is in – apart, that is, from an ill-advised number comparing appropriation of somebody else’s celebrity contacts as “data rape”. Quite why nobody pointed out that attempting to rhyme “rape” with “it doesn’t make you feel great” is a truly horrendous idea, I have no clue. But this apart, Mullaney’s warm manner, his constant breaking of the fourth wall and his dismissal of the show’s rough edges sets him as someone who, not without justification, is above all this nonsense.

We all should be.

Scott Matthewman