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This is a review of the March 2015 production.
Before the geeks inherited the Earth, before ‘Big Bang Theory’, ‘Star Trek’ reboots, omnipresent Marvel movies and crushes on Benedict Cumberbatch, there were bands like Busted and Son of Dork.
British bands who took 99 per cent of their inspiration from that one Wheatus song about listening to Iron Maiden, and sang vanilla pop punk in American accents with loads of ‘Back to the Future’ and video game references thrown in. It’s only in retrospect that you can see quite how weird they were, and ‘Loserville’, co-written by Busted songsmith James Bourne, is all about retrospect.
Set in an alternate 1971 that’s a mash-up of every American high-school, slacker culture cliché imaginable, ‘Loserville’ tells the story of Michael Dork, who’s a bit of an, erm, dork, take on the might of both the jocks and a multi-million dollar computing corporation with only a gang of social misfits and his ace hacker skills.
It’s such a familiar story that it’s almost disorienting, two hours of déjà vu played over sunny chord changes and angsty lyrics, but it’s also hard to resist. Michael’s blossoming romance with wannabe astronaut Holly Manson is candy-sweet and his battle against arch-jock Eddie Arch (see what they did there?) is pretty satisfying.
Michael Burgen directs a bright and bouncy revival production that makes a virtue of its scrappiness, and there’s a hugely talented (and just generally huge) cast crammed into the Union’s Tardis-like space. Luke Newton and Holly-Anne Hull are adorbs enough as the central couple, but the stage is well and truly stolen by the cosmically talented Jordan Fox as jealous best friend Lucas.
There are moments where the band drown out the singers, and apart from the awesome ‘Holly…I’m The One’ and ‘We’re Not Alone’ the songs tend to blur into one another and betray their roots at the teenage disco. But ‘Loserville’ aims to please and largely succeeds.
It may have flopped on the West End in 2012, but if this production demonstrates anything, it’s that this easy-going, family-friendly musical surely has a long and bright future ahead of it in studio revivals and High School drama clubs the world over.