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There are certain obviously awful films out there – usually meatheaded action flicks or scare-free horrors – that are simply not screened for critics, on the grounds that, you know, they’ll all hate it, so what’s the point?
It would be lovely if the producers of ‘Wag! The Musical’ had hit upon the same idea, because frankly it’s precisely as awful as it sounds – it’s scored single star reviews across the board, and it’s hard to imagine that anyone involved expected anything else.
Anyhoo: spunky Jenny (Daisy Wood-Davis) works in a department store, where she spends most of her day avoiding work and grumbling about how prissy boss Mr Frank (Tim Flavin) expects her to do work. She’s also considering fleeing the country with her married footballer lover. But first there’s a charity fashion show happening in store, where the modelling will be carried out by a collection of Wags, ie footballers’ idle rich wives and girlfriends.
To say that ‘Wag! The Musical’ fails to engage with its central premise is to invite the suggestion that I’m taking it all a bit too seriously. Nonetheless the Wags – a collection of teak-coloured middle-aged women who don’t do much singing – are oddly peripheral to the groaningly formulaic central story about Jenny.
Rather than being offensively bad ‘Wag!’ sort of blunders on in a dull, well-meaning muddle, two-and-a-half drab, weakly-sung, low-budget hours based around a rags-to-riches story in which Jenny betters herself in a manner scarcely less dubious than if she had absconded with her lover.
Anyway, if you’re the type of person inclined to see a show called ‘Wag! The Musical’, and you are drunk enough, then you’ll probably have an okay time in spite of what’s happening on stage. This show is not for the rest of us.
By Andrzej Lukowski