The human race is guilty of getting up to all sorts on the internet. Perhaps that accounts for why the original cast recording of this eccentric American musical, about a teenager with a supercomputer in his head, has been streamed an astonishing 350 million times. The result is a bit like Dear Evan Hansen on helium.
It centres around Jeremy (Scott Folan), so socially anxious that he willingly pays a large amount of money to take a strange grey pill from Japan. This manifests into a bossy processing system who looks like Keanu Reeves (Stewart Clarke), barking instructions about what clothes to buy and how to have conversations. Much like Evan Hansen, Jeremy’s main ambition is to get a girlfriend; these recurring incel vibes make him a hard protagonist to root for. It’s budding actress (Miracle Chance) that he’s set his sights on, meaning he must follow the fate of every fictional high school character and sign up for the school play in order to woo her.
It’s easy to see why the bleepy bloopy soundtrack is so popular: consolatory lyrics like “I don’t wanna be special, I just wanna survive” are Tumblr blog gold. But the appeal doesn’t feel much broader than that, each song goes on forever, and the show lapses into solipsism and cliched messages (conformity is bad, guys, don’t ditch your mates for the cool people, etc). There's distinctly no chill about 350 million streams, though, and this production will undoubtedly delight the fans regardless.
Until May 3 (lwtheatres.co.uk; 020 7087 7900)
