“Royal Vauxhall sees these three larger-than-life characters shacked up in a Kensington flat, when they decide to cure their boredom by dragging themselves up and heading to the Royal Vauxhall Tavern.
There’s the old adage that comedy is just tragedy plus time, and Royal Vauxhall gauges that time at around 28 years. It’s 1988 and the three lead protagonists all have deep-rooted problems: one has a tepid marriage into a family that never really accepted her; another is suing his ex-wife for revealing his homosexuality in a tell-all book; and the other is dying slowly of a disease that no-one really knows anything about. Princess Diana, Kenny Everett and Freddie Mercury are three of the most famous and adored faces in the country, but behind their cheery façade, they are all truly miserable. The opening song has them gloating ‘what would you do to be us?’, but by the end, we conclude that it’s not much.
Yet despite this morose set-up, Desmond O’Connor’s musical is full of laughs, mostly abetted by the glorious benefit of hindsight. The best jokes of the night come at the expense of Diana’s cold and distant husband, with her cutting response when offered a line of coke the pick of the bunch. The songs are mostly bouncy bastardisations of Queen songs and other 80s pop classics, so it’s great to be able to focus on the wit of the lyrics, without the pitfall of forgettable melodies that taint so many low-budget musicals.
Royal Vauxhall sees these three larger-than-life characters shacked up in a Kensington flat, when they decide to cure their boredom by dragging themselves up and heading to the Royal Vauxhall Tavern. We’ve all been there, but the big difference is we don’t risk jeopardising our public profile every time we saunter up Kennington Lane. Well, most of us don’t at least. The musical follows their night, but the daily pressures of maintaining their immaculate public profiles catches up with the trio and their vulnerabilities spill over, conveniently into song.
Despite playing such familiar faces, the cast are able to play their tortured characters convincingly. Sarah-Louise Young is just the right combination of flirty and kittenish as Diana, while Tom Giles’ does what Adam Lambert and many others have failed to do in capturing at least a modicum of Freddie’s showmanship and raw sex appeal. The best is Matthew Jones who is perfect at capturing the gurning and eager to please Kenny Everett, who never lets an innuendo go by unprobed, but is perhaps the most vulnerable and closeted of them all. There’s a superb raft of secondary characters, such as the lyrical bouncer to the RVT, a curt drag queen, and, as no play set in the 1980’s would be complete without it, a cameo from Margaret Thatcher.
The musical has just come back from a successful run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, but it’s difficult to imagine seeing it anywhere other than the eponymous venue. The cast are constantly jumping off stage and mixing with the crowd, lending it an air of chummy intimacy. Much like the RVT itself, the production is a little rough around the edges, but it more than compensates with playful charm, especially when a minor technical issue is played off with some exemplary time-wasting (‘Tell me again, Freddie, how you wrote Bohemian Rhapsody’). Overall, it’s well balanced, on the surface a camp romp, but one unafraid to explore the internal strife at the heart of each character. Royal Vauxhall plays again on several dates throughout the autumn and anyone already smitten with the venue will adore this loving tribute.
• Royal Vauxhall is at Royal Vauxhall Tavern, 372 Kennington Lane, SE11 5HY, on October 26th, November 16th, 23rd and 24th at 8pm, Tickets £12-15 and are available vauxhalltavern.com
