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Theatre
Ian McKellen is captivating throughout. He delights in the play’s gallows humour, yet is also maudlin and poignant
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Slight quibbles notwithstanding, this will set the West End’s stock riding high
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Utterly, utterly brilliant. You really are in for a treat
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We went on a quiet sunday evening and the food was excellent, but the experience let down by the service and ambiance
London,
Critic rating
Reader rating
There's no such thing as bad publicity at the ever-competitive Fringe. So the producers of Jihad: The Musical must have been positively delighted when talk of banning the show was followed by condemnatory petitions on the Prime Minister's website.
It was reminiscent of the furore surrounding Monty Python's Life Of Brian, which the show resembles in style and tone if not quality. But Zoe Samuel and Benjamin Scheuer's knockabout musical comedy - in which a na've Afghan flower-seller finds himself co-opted into becoming a suicide bomber - no more causes offence or offers a Jihadi blueprint than The
Producers advocated Nazism, or The Sound Of Music nunneries.
With musical numbers (of varying quality) including I Wanna Be Like Osama and the Jihad Jive, terrorism and the Western media are the real targets - not Muslims.
Kitsch, lightweight, old-fashioned fun rather than controversial, if anything the show's faults lie in not going for the jugular more.
Until Monday, C Chambers Street, 10.25pm, £8.50 to £10.50.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
