Review: NUL POINTS!, Union Theatre

It's 2012 and Josh, a Eurovision superfan, is like a toddler on Sunny D because tonight is THE NIGHT! Live, all the way from the shores of the Caspian Sea, the annual orgy of camp, chanteuses and carnivalesque is being beamed into his flat and he has fellow drama school EV-ers, Kat and Daz along for the ride. Euphoria (Loreen, Sweden, 2012, winner) does indeed lie in store.

Martin Blackburn's new comedy tracks our three besties and the strippergram, Andy, who arrived at the wrong address but soon joins the clan and Gina, Josh's mother, as the Eurovisions slide by and friendships and romances bloom and fade. It's a super idea for a play and much of it works, but, as can be the case with a show that lives or dies on its laugh quotient, the tone isn't always as consistent nor as sustained as it might be.

Kane Verrall has a lot of fun with Josh, the man who can construct whole sentences out of Eurovision song titles down the years. He really drives the uproarious opening half-hour or so, but we're also catching a touch of tragedy looming. His friend Kat (Charlotte East) is on a Phoebe Waller-Bridge-like trajectory from one-woman Edinburgh Fringe show to superstardom and, as the Eurovisions come and go, her mining of his personality but reluctance to cast him in a role that would make his career, eats into their relationship.

Meanwhile, Daz (Marcus J Foreman) is getting plenty of acting jobs but boozing plenty too which fractures his relationship with Kat but he's getting on fine with Andy (Sean Huddlestan), buff and bluff as the dancer who just rubs along, but succeeds anyway. Adèle Anderson does what she can with the matriarch Gina, but she's mainly there to add a few upper-middle class putdowns to the loved-up (and not so loved-up) youngsters.

It's all pretty light over-the-top stuff in the first half, a few risqué quips, a few (more than a few) Eurovision in-jokes and a narrative of relationships coming under pressure as professional and personal priorities crack them apart. But the plot takes a not entirely unexpected turn in the second half that deflates that balloon and introduces a poignancy that never quite lands as convincingly as it should.

At two and a half hours or so including the interval, it would be a tough call to maintain the energy and humour throughout, but the transformation from a very specific and laugh-laden opening to a somewhat generic closing half-hour (parenting, guilt and single middle-aged woman looking for love), saps the pace a comedy needs.

Like many a Eurovision in the last couple of decades, it could do with being shorter with fewer segments that appear to be just making up the numbers. But, as superfans and casual viewers would agree, the good moments are very good indeed. If not quite douze points, it's more than nul points, so a qualified congratulations (Cliff, UK, 1968, second) to everyone involved.

Back to you in Liverpool, Graham, for the votes of the other juries.

Nul Points! at the Union Theatre until 20 May

Photo Credit: East Photography

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