FLOP! The Best Songs From The Worst Musicals continues at Wine Bar at Gilded Balloon Teviot until 30 August 2026 (except 26).
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
FLOP! The Best Songs From The Worst Musicals, presented by Seabright Live, has made an entirely justified return to the Fringe with its irresistible premise: taking the surviving songs from Broadway and West End disasters and giving them the loving attention they never received from their original productions.
Rather than simply laughing at bad musicals, Arthur Hull’s great trick is to make audiences understand why these shows initially attracted talented writers, composers, performers and producers before demonstrating, with impeccable comic timing, how spectacularly things can go wrong.
Building upon its first Fringe outing that established it as an unusually knowledgeable and entertaining piece of musical theatre evangelism, the show remains impressively well documented as well as funny.
Hull, a graduate of the world famous Flying Fruit Fly Circus and former top three finalist on The Voice Australia, is the reason the production works so well. He is an exuberant performer, raconteur, singer, dancer and musical theatre obsessive who moves effortlessly between affection, ridicule and genuine admiration.
Packed with examples of musicals that deserved better than their reputations, Hull’s enthusiasm makes even the most notorious failures seem worth rediscovering, ultimately proving that FLOP! is a rare show about bad theatre that is deep down good theatre!
Highlights are Hull’s moving rendition of ‘If the World Should End’, the saving grace of the ill-fated Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, and his newly added, spectacular ‘Franklin Shepard, Inc.’ from Sondheim’s legendary flop turned success Merrily We Roll Along.
Patrick Honoré
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