As a prelude to The Producers, this enterprising drama school is currently trying out a new musical that smashes the good-taste barrier. Setting The Yeomen of the Guard score to new lyrics, Peter Morris has created a political satire based on the premise that Sir Oswald Mosley became prime minister in 1936. The result is a topsy-turvy view of British history that is as intellectually flawed as it is impressively executed.
The problem with an anti-fascist musical is that form and content don't match. While it is possible to swallow Morris's premise that a Mosley premiership would have led to the execution of Virginia Woolf and the imprisonment of TE Lawrence, there comes a point when the smile freezes on one's lips: for me that is reached when Mosley sets up the Swansea Conference, clearly based on the Wannsee Conference which authorised Nazi genocide.
Morris implies that the anti-semitism which poisoned British 1930s life is still active today. But the musical form gives a sheen to the fascism he deplores. And, although Morris claims to find in Sullivan's music a portentous nationalism, what I hear is a rippling melodic invention. Only in the transformation of "I have a song to sing-o" into a defiantly working-class anthem does the ironic contrast between music and lyrics pay off.
Already LAMDA has seeded two shows - Mother Clap's Molly House and Remembrance of Things Past - that have gone on to National success. This one, at over three hours, needs surgery if it is to have a longer life. But it is confidently directed by Stephen Jameson; and Jessica Sedler as a black-leathered Unity Mitford, Simon Harrison as a dangerously charismatic Mosley and Holly Janowski as a dildo-wielding Wallis Simpson clearly have bright futures.
· Until tomorrow. Box office: 020-8834 0500.
