Welcome to the monstrous cabaret, where the women outsmarted by Odysseus seethe and sing. The Arcola’s basement studio serves as our vengeful trio’s glitter-filled underground cavern. Charybdis, Siren and Scylla take turns performing their stories, gnashing their teeth for fresh blood. “We used to kill,” they croon, “now we cabaret.”
Some of Ismini Papaioannou’s costumes are delightful, with Siren’s white ruff and crinoline cage echoing her charming character and the rich voice of Jazz Jenkins. Our preening host, Charybdis (Hannah van der Westhuysen), is full of mirth and smirking rage, dressed in layers of sea-swirling iridescence. Scylla (Kate Newman), the show’s resident furry, sheds over the carpet and has a coat and matching nipple-tassels made of tattered human hair.
These characters are cheekily drawn but the story struggles to give them a second life. Emily Louizou’s direction is in more comfortable territory with the strange, sultry character explanation, and Ioli Filippakopoulou’s movement is bolder the camper it becomes, like in the jaunty tune sung through gritted teeth: Some Men Won’t Die. Yet too much of this classical Greek retelling, written by Louizou and Quentin Beroud, takes itself far more seriously than its setup has room for. The more efforts are made to humanise our deadly band, the more their conversations fall into girl-boss cliches.
With the appearance of a pesky human (Newman, now de-wigged), the three chaos-causers are resignedly lulled out of their showbiz early retirements towards one more kill. But the drawn-out resistance slows down the storytelling, with Clytemnestra’s tale drip-fed rather than driving us through.
Irene Skylakaki’s electronic score waves dreamily throughout, but it’s the cabaret songs themselves where the energy flails. The stories slot passively into the music, never quite managing to hold the colossal emotions, epic journeys and wild tales they aim to depict. A cabaret of put-upon deep-sea creatures and misandrist cave-dwellers is rife with potential for mystery, danger and wild drama. That’s all simmering beneath this story, but the show needs more development. With bright ideas but not revelatory ones, Fabulous Creatures feels too much like a lightly entertaining revision session for a classics exam.
• At Arcola theatre, London, until 15 June
