Bad Girls - The Musical
West Yorkshire Playhouse, to 1 July
Originally set up in 1998, Shed Productions has provided British television with a couple of its most memorable dramas in the past decade. And while more recently Footballers' Wives has hogged most of the tabloid limelight, its first commission, the gloriously absurd Bad Girls - best described as the bastard British offspring of Prisoner Cell Block H and Dynasty - is now on its eighth series.
Perhaps inspired by seeing members of the TV cast singing songs from Chicago on a recent Children in Need, the jailbirds' story has been transformed into a musical. Yet for all its potential it doesn't quite manage to deliver. The first act, where the audience is introduced to the cast of familiar characters, races along beautifully, following the plight of Rachel Hicks, a new, naive inmate who disastrously falls in with the wrong crowd. Echoing the TV show, the inmates of Larkhall Prison are superficially rough and ready but have hearts of gold just waiting to be discovered, while the wardens are divided into the youthful, well-meaning wing governor, slinkily played by Laura Rogers, and the hard-bitten, cynical old hands, best represented by the downright evil Jim Fenner. The songs by Kath Gotts whip the narrative along at a lick.
However, like its small screen sibling, Bad Girls - The Musical has a dark side. After Rachel's rape at the hands of Fenner and her subsequent suicide at the end of the first act, the cast struggles to pick up the pace. Suddenly the songs delay the plot's momentum. A love triangle involving inmate Nikki Wade (wrongly jailed, naturally, for stabbing a policeman who was raping her lesbian lover), the governor and a young warden feels like a sideshow, as does a sub-plot involving Julie (nicked for theft and prostitution) and her public school-educated son. Fenner, played by Hal Fowler, never quite manages to give you the creeps in the way Jack Ellis did on the telly. In the end he gets his comeuppance but the denouement of this feelgood musical doesn't feel all that good.
Despite the flaws there's enough wit and verve to hold the show together. And if Bad Girls falls tantalisingly short of Jerry Springer-like cult classic status, it remains a really enjoyable night out.
