Gutenberg! The Musical! Jermyn Street Theatre, London SW1, until 28 January
Two exclamation marks in one title might be asking for trouble. But Gutenberg! The Musical! deserves the brio implicit in its punctuation. Written and performed by the American duo of Anthony King and Scott Brown, the piece has the feel of a particularly sparky Edinburgh Festival offering displaced to London's tiny Jermyn Street Theatre, which is unlikely to be its last port of call.
The performers play two musical theatre aspirants desperate to find backing for their latest venture: a canter through the life of, yes, Johann Gutenberg, the inventor of printing by moveable type. (Well, Evita no doubt sounded odd on paper too.) And so we witness a run through that both sends up the musical form and celebrates it: deconstruction and reconstruction at once. 'Wow, that was a ballad,' enthuses the prodigiously gifted Brown after a duet entitled 'Monk With Me'. Elsewhere we're treated to explanations of the '11 o'clock number', the need to end your first act with a raucous rock song, and historical fiction, ie 'fiction that's true'. The show gives you all that, alongside a supremely clever definition of what is currently meant by metaphor. You grin throughout, sometimes laugh heartily and learn something, too.
