Fun at the Beach Romp-Bomp-a-Lomp!! – Southwark Playhouse Borough

The company of Fun at the Beach Romp-Bomp-a-Lomp!! at Southwark Playhouse Borough, London. Picture: Danny Kaan

Fun at the Beach Romp-Bomp-a-Lomp!! continues at Southwark Playhouse Borough, London until 22 June 2024.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

It’s a genre that’s been out of vogue for some 60 years or more, but there’s something about American teen beach movies that makes them persist in the collective consciousness.

That may be down, in part, to how references to them persist in retro works that have come after. Grease comes to mind, and how it both satirised and celebrated the sickly sweetness – with Rizzo explicitly comparing the innocent Sandy to Sandra Dee, one of the stars of the genre.

There have been other attempts to satirise the genre – Disney Channel followed up its High School Musical franchise with the inexplicably fun Teen Beach Movie, in which a modern couple of teenagers are swept up by a freak storm and land inside an all-singing, all-dancing extravaganza full of surfer dudes and biker chicks.

The latest entry into the parodic tribute to beach movies is Fun at the Beach Romp-Bomp-a-Lomp!!, a new musical with music and lyrics by Brandon Lambert and a book by Martin Landry. It shares a lot of DNA with Disney’s approach to the genre, poking fun at the genre’s tropes while also introducing its own zany band of comedy silliness to propel the narrative.

But that is where the similarities end, for Fun at the Beach…’s spin on the comedy aspect is darker, while remaining suitably silly. The Beach Romp-Bomp-a-Lomp is a competition to find the King or Queen of the Beach, but what starts out as a simple dance competition becomes gradually more brutal, with man-eating sharks and electrified beach balls among the obstacles that ensure the winner is the only one left alive.

This zanily macabre plot, much as it is, is really just the vehicle for a multitude of songs that parody some classic pop hits. So thinly veiled as to be translucent at times, Lambert’s songs quickly establish the mood such that as each new number starts, the audience revels in identifying which song is being pilloried. The Beach Boys’ ‘Surfin’ U.S.A.’ becomes ‘Surf America’; Aretha Franklin’s ‘R-E-S-P-E-C-T’ becomes ‘A-P-P-R-E-C-I-A-T-I-O-N’; the Penguins’ ‘Earth Angel’ is tweaked to become ‘Beach Angel’, and so on.

Perhaps the finest of these parodies is a send-up of Merry Clayton’s ‘It’s In His Kiss’, later made famous as ‘The Shoop Shoop Song’ when covered by Cher. In Lambert’s version, the even more chaste ‘It’s In His Peck’, Katie Oxman’s lead vocalist takes increasing umbrage as the backing singers’ questioning continues to ignore the answer given in the show’s title.

That’s the level at which Fun at the Beach… works best, and there are plenty such moments to enjoy. On occasion, some of the jokes in the song parodies stay a little too long, and a verse or chorus trimmed here or there might help.

Similarly, much of Landry’s book relies upon repetition, albeit to the point of absurdity and beyond. As the stereotypical good-looking-but-insanely-dumb romantic leads, Janice Landry’s Chastity and Jack Whittle’s Dude find themselves locked in a cycle of putting oneself down while complimenting the other, their dialogue seemingly stuck on an endless cycle that becomes annoying, then infuriating, then hilarious as it continues.

Slick direction from Mark Bell includes several visual gags that make full use of Emily Bestow’s fun set design. Coupled with performances that consistently engage – especially from Ellie Clayton, whose Mary Joe is one of the few characters who gets to show a completely different side to their persona away from their initial cookie-cutter stereotype – there is a whole lot of fun to be had.

There is a break from the relentless lampoonery right at the end, as the sole survivor breaks out into ‘There’s No Song’, the musical’s one true “original”, non-parodic number. It ends up being the sort of breath from parody that one sometimes wishes the preceding 80 minutes could have taken more often, but it does ensure that the lasting impression is of something more than an extended comedy skit.

And in essence, an extended sketch is what this show really is. But when the hit rate for the jokes are this high, and the quality of the song parodies remain consistent, it’s a simple joke structure that keeps on giving. From its New York workshop origins to this world premiere full production, there is a whole lot of fun in Fun at the Beach Romp-Bomp-a-Lomp!!

Scott Matthewman