One Man Musical – Underbelly Boulevard Theatre

Picture: Avalon

One Man Musical continues at the Underbelly Boulevard, London until 2 March 2025.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Sisters Rosie and Nicola Dempsey, who write and perform as comedy musicians Flo and Joan, are no strangers to writing for the stage, having created songs for the drag murder mystery comedy Death Drop.

In their latest show One Man Musical, transferring to the Underbelly Boulevard Theatre from a successful and much-praised run at last year’s Edinburg Festival Fringe, the sisters also take on book writing duties to create a musical that is a potted biography, give or take several huge liberties, of one of the larger figures in British musical theatre, Andrew Lloyd Webber.

George Fouracres’ portrayal of Lloyd Webber is not an impersonation by any means. He neither looks nor sounds anything like the composer. And that’s part of the fun of this crazy show – the thought that such a recognisable figure in the theatrical landscape could actually be a freewheeling comedian who comes across as the bastard son of Terry-Thomas and Count Arthur Strong.

Fouracres fizzles with energy throughout, talking of how the man who would become “The Music Mandrew” comes from what the character describes as “impoverished” West Kensington, with an education at Westminster School. Potshots at the Underbelly Boulevard’s location in the heart of Soho’s sex industry abound, as do comments at the theatre decor itself, which he compares to a “cruise ship cocktail lounge”, while the orange, squeaky seats prompt a Bonnie Langford reference that has the audience howling.

Flo and Joan’s script takes a relatively chronological approach to Lloyd Webber’s biography, rattling through his marriages and his working relationship with Tim Rice (played by a bag of rice). Various numbers, performed with gusto by Fouracres, riff on the composer’s melodies for those early musicals in ways that emphasise that this is very much an affectionate, while still cutting, tribute to British musicals and the landscape hewn in Lloyd Webber’s wake.

But there is still much direct criticism of Lloyd Webber’s foibles, especially when he hit his weirder era with both Cats and Starlight Express (the latter of which sees Fouracres, of course, donning roller skates). His post-Rice show Tell Me On a Sunday is notably talked about as “two middle-aged men” (Lloyd Webber and lyricist Don Black) writing about a young woman’s quest to find herself (while there are references to School of Rock, the musical declines to comment on the suitability of Julian Fellowes as that musical’s book writer).

The ennobled Lord Lloyd-Webber’s politics also come into question, from his adoration of Margaret Thatcher to the occasion in 2015 when he flew back from New York, first class, to vote on the government’s bill to reduce tax credits. But for much of the first two thirds of the show, this is Lloyd Webber’s story from (this version of) Lloyd Webber’s perspective; deliberately, and often hilariously, slanted in the composer’s favour.

But one cannot escape the composer’s more recent track record, and when an ethereal voice commands him to face his whole life story and his failings, Fouracres reels off some more recent musicals (Stephen Ward, odd; Cinderella, bad; Bad Cinderella, worse) as well as acknowledge that his accrued wealth could be put to use supporting newer writing talents.

It is, at points, extremely cutting indeed, but everything is delivered at such a thrillingly stupid and madcap pace that the Lord himself could watch the show and not be tempted to call in the lawyers. The version of Lloyd Webber that George Fouracres conjures up in front of our eyes is every bit as mercurial, hot-headed and opinionated as the real thing; but he’s also adorably vulnerable, and much more in tune with the wider theatrical community than the real thing could ever be.

There is no doubt that Lloyd Webber has indelibly shaped the musical theatre landscape here in Britain and on Broadway, for both good and ill. But perhaps One Man Musical is his greatest, if unintended, legacy. Without The Music Mandrew, Flo and Joan would not have been able to write one of the most fun new musicals of the year.

Scott Matthewman