Michael Jackson At The Gates Of Heaven And Hell - Fringe 2009
Live Review

There’s really only one thing you can say about Michael Jackson At The Gates Of Heaven And Hell. It’s bad. It’s really, really bad.

Some rough edges might be expected in a show so hastily put-together, but this is so ill-conceived, so shoddily written and so utterly pointless as to be a vapid waste of time.

The very least you would have thought they could do was compile every offensive Jacko gag doing the rounds into an over-the-top celebration of bad taste. But no, any hint of controversy has been carefully exorcised, with the only oblique reference to the child abuse allegations coming when one character idly says: ‘My mum thinks you’re a paedoph….’ before stopping himself short.

Instead we get a series of unimaginative watered-down sketches that would shame the most shoddy student revue: shrill parodies of entertainment news programmes, an uncoordinated interpretive dance parody, kids talking in urban rhythms, which is always assumed to be inherently hilarious. You’ve seen it all before, and you’ve see it all done better.

As he waits in purgatory, Jacko runs though a series of random episodes, guided by Death, a job that’s been allocated to John Lennon as punishment for not believing in God. The King Of Pop gets interviewed by an aloof Princess Di, for example, while his ultimate fate is decided by X-Factor style phone-in – these are the sort of ‘oh, just shove down the first thing that comes to mind’ ideas writers Charlie and Ben Brafman are using. After all, it’s about Michael Jackson, that’ll pull in the audience whatever the product.

The young cast do their best with this execrable nonsense. When Michael Edwards first speaks as Jackson, his accurate breathlessly squeaky voice gets the first laugh of the night – although that pretty much is the comedic high. And Hatty Preston deserve mention for her spoof Mariah Carey, which is impressive in performance if entirely unjustified in terms of even this barely perceptible plot.

Cynical, boring and woefully ill-through out – where’s a lethal dose of painkillers when you need it?