Queer culture is being squeezed, blandification is rampant, and the careers of Bourgeois & Maurice and David Hoyle are – they’re telling us – going nowhere fast. Something’s got to give – and tonight, these bastions of outre cabaret are heading for the titular Middle of the Road.
It’s a great idea, a heavily sardonic paean to the joys of dressing down, brainlessness and the oeuvre of James Blunt. The trio’s commitment to this new reality – more Brave New World than a brave new world – is tartly funny, and Hoyle’s lobotomised smile (“from now on, there’ll be no more criticising anything …”) could stun a Mumford at 10 paces.
It’s partly a self-satire: much of the fun comes from the performers’ supercilious horror at having to wear jeans and say nice things about “Princess” Charlotte. But it’s mainly a withering takedown of mainstream culture, from Bourgeois & Maurice’s song about shy Toryism, Step to the Right, to a PowerPoint presentation that contrasts the skills of Britain’s Got Talent pooch Matisse to Bill Hicks, and finds in favour of the former. At a time when judgment is seldom passed on other people’s tastes, this show – so scornful of quiescent submission to the orthodoxy – makes a bracing impact.
It loses its focus in the final third; there’s a false ending, and a song about the online-opinion surfeit that doesn’t quite fit. You can sometimes hear the concept creak, too: the show’s equation of flamboyance with political dissidence is questionable. But that’s acknowledged, in an intriguing sequence pitching Hoyle, Bourgeois and Maurice into arguments with their real-life, un-fabulous selves. A note of self-doubt is struck that serves only to reinforce Middle of the Road’s old-school ideals: complain, challenge hierarchies, protest the status quo. It’s a crude, silly and gloriously sarcastic hymn to our need, greater than ever, for alternatives.
- At Soho theatre, London, until 13 June. Box office: 020-7478 0100.
