Remember the 1994 film? Of course you do! Muriel’s Wedding received pretty much worldwide acclaim for being a brash, no holds barred comedy where the ugly duckling becomes – if not a swan, then at least a fully grown duck who is completely at ease with who she is. The musical, with music and lyrics by Kate Miller-Heidke and Keir Nuttall, opened in Sydney in 2017, toured Australia in 2019 and has finally re-emerged with its UK premiere at the Leicester Curve.

How well does it transfer to the stage, thirty-one (really?) years later, and as a musical? It’s certainly helped by having an excellent production; director Simon Phillips assembled a great creative team around him, and it shows from the start. Matt Kinley’s set is outstanding and combined with Natasha Chivers’ lighting and Andrzej Goulding’s video design, is a delight to the eyes and convincingly takes us from Leicester to the bright lights of Porpoise Spit. The poker machines at the RSL, the social media littering the back wall, and the suggestions of the sun-drenched Australian coast and the unique combination of pizzazz and sordidness that is Sydney are all beautifully recreated.

Gabriela Tylesova’s costumes convey perfectly all aspects of Australian life; from the beach bums to the suburban household and the glamour and tastelessness that are vital to the existence of the vacuous town girls. Tom Slade’s band does a tremendous job of recreating the sounds of Abba as well as the new songs of Miller-Heidke and Nuttall. And there are also some excellent performances, more of which later.

However, there’s one thing that drags this show down; and, sadly, that’s the show itself. I wondered to what extent the story of Muriel’s Wedding would appear dated today, and the answer is – very. When the film came out, fat-shaming was funny and misogyny was a giggle. Today, much of the content of the show seems extremely cruel, with Muriel being picked on for her style (lack of it) and weight (excess of it), and Betty being mocked – and deceived – for being a maternal drudge who can’t work out that 80-50=30. In fact the story is so misogynistic that even the women hate women. But the character of Muriel doesn’t help herself because she is so extremely unlikeable anyway. A liar and a thief, she doesn’t care about swindling her parents or spinning sob stories to her best friend; maybe in the film she was an amusing fantasist, but here the character simply uses her position and charisma to deceive and break the law.

Scenes are over-extended and padded out, so that the two hours forty-five minutes feels extremely long. Most of the songs don’t move the story forward and none of them is memorable. The humour is often very lazy – joking about forgetting all the letters that can follow LGBT has been done to death, frankly – and there’s a scene and song that is based completely on their inability to remember and pronounce the surname Shkuratov – it took me back to the days of TV’s Mind Your Language, laughing at foreign accents, and no one wants to go there again. In fact a couple of the lyrics rely on stupid verbal sounds rather than words; here’s a quarter of the lyrics for the chorus of the bullying number Can’t Hang:  “See we’re like ah–ah–ah–ah–ah–ah–ah, And you’re like ugh–ugh–ugh–ugh–ugh–ugh–ugh” (the other three quarters are very similar). And here’s the refrain of Meet the Heslops: “Wowww! Wow-ow-ow What? Close one (gasp) Hah! Yeah!”  (Repeat ad nauseam).

The show frequently feels crude and lacks insight; in fact, the only insight I could get from it is how life can be like an Abba song. But even then, there is something creepy about Abba becoming gentle angels of death as they encourage Muriel’s mum Betty into suicide because she doesn’t want to be a burden on anyone. However, that’s not to criticise the Abba sequences in the show which are by far its best moments; especially Bronte Alice-Tadman and Jasmine Hackett as Anna-Frid and Agnetha, who sing superbly and truly convey that Abba feel; Aaron Tsindos’ and Jamie Doncaster’s Benny and Bjorn are comedy Scandi stereotypes that don’t do justice to the originals.

There is, fortunately, a terrific star performance from Megan Ellis as Muriel. A wonderful stage presence who can convey any emotion and whose voice is a dream; it’s a fantastic performance. Annabel Marlow is full of spirit as her friend Rhonda, and there’s a strong performance from Darren Day as Muriel’s corrupt father Bill and Laura Medforth as her brow-beaten mother Betty. And Ethan Pascal Peters is excellent as the underachieving Brice Nobes, even if the repeated jokes about his name get tedious.

The overwhelming feeling that the show gave me is a sense of sadness. Sad, obviously, because elements of the story are extremely sad, with the death of Betty, her husband Bill who only cares about himself, and the other family members who realise too late that they can’t have their mum back. But the misogyny is depressing, and it’s tough to be asked to identify with a central character who, deep down, is not a nice person. And I think it’s sad that a much-loved and admired film has been reshaped into something that basically doesn’t work.

The midweek matinee at the Curve theatre had plenty of empty seats, and I seriously doubt the ability of this show to make much of a splash after its few weeks in Leicester. It was touch and go as to whether we would leave at the interval, but the performance of Megan Ellis convinced us to go back, and to be fair it does improve a little in the second half. Muriel’s Wedding runs at the Curve until 10^th May.

Two Disappointing For More!