Barbershopera: Apocalypse No!

How do you make a silly joke sublime? Add rhyme, elasto-jawed mugging and four-part harmony of course. Barbershopera’s heavily accented a cappella musical comedies are an Edinburgh Fringe institution and their roots – in street performance, panto and revue-style antics – remain proudly visible in their latest wheeze.

‘Apocalypse No!’ is Barbershop’s answer to Terry Pratchett: a daft and exuberant canter to the end of the world and back, starring three of the four horsemen of the apocalypse (Rob Castell, Tom Sadler and Pete Sorel-Cameron) and their accidental leader – not Death, but beleaguered primary school teacher Beth (Lara Stubbs).

This is a pastiche-tastic collage of of wacky ideas and exaggerated musical jokes (Famine, Pestilence and War’s R&B-style ballad is inspired). All multi-task madly, and Rob Castell is very good value as the secretly timorous War, a miniature Latin American schoolboy and a strangely sexy bearded nun.

Shades of ‘Blackadder’ and ‘Monty Python’ hover over the potty-mouthed put-downs and the sheer zany effrontery of it all. It’ll be too broad, derivative and silly for some, but for giggling fans, it’s heaven on a hobby horse.