Creator: American Sing Song
Director: RJ Tolan
You’ve never seen a show like this; it’s a high-concept mix of humongous hairdos, cults, sex toys, the apocalypse and a love story. It’s also a bit of a musical/cabaret and often pulls off each of these elements all at once.
With this much packed in, you’d be forgiven for thinking the show might lose the run of itself, but the saving grace here is a wonderful attention to detail throughout that leaves every aspect of the show well served. The plot is key to all this, as we follow Connor (Nadja Leonhard-Hooper) and Luke (Jake Brasch), two boys raised in a pseudo-Christian religious cult that correctly predicted a Rapture-like event and saved a small flock of believers through the highly un-Christian technique of shoving items up their holes.
It’s a goofy initial premise that cleverly proceeds to tell quite a heartfelt and engaging story. Rather than lean into the absurdity of the situation, Leonhard-Hooper and Brasch take these boys on what feels like a Disneyfied (albeit anally-retentive) post-apocalyptic road trip as both boys strive to prove themselves as men to Luke’s fire-and-brimstone father, who leads their cult.
The journey takes the boys from highs to lows, through love and hate, and results in some surprisingly cosmic consequences. It’s a genuinely thrilling tale, and rounding all this out are the impressive technical talents of both Brasch and Leonhard-Hooper, the former playing keyboards throughout the show to provide melodies for the songs and the latter performing live sound effects with a vast array of Foley objects, both effective and hilarious and all on an inventive and intelligent set by designer Emmie Finckel. On top of this, both sing, making the show into a full-blown and highly entertaining cabaret experience.
The only holes one can poke here would be the faltering of energy toward the end of the show, even as things wrap up surprisingly well, which may, in turn, be due to the show forgetting much of what it focused on in its first half. Most early characters are left largely forgotten or irrelevant and the reasons for much of the original plot stay quite ungrounded; it’s never really justified why Luke’s pastor father puts events into motion in the first place by ordering the elimination of the homosexual ‘Daddies of Cincinnati’, and as funny as details like these may be they work best when they can chime with the rest of the narrative, which for the most part is done well throughout but could probably do with one or two script passes for perfection.
But why poke holes any further? The show is immense fun, and the talent on display is some of the best Soho is sure to see all year. If you’re looking for some top-shelf comedy this summer, this is it.
Runs until 1 August 2026 and then at Edinburgh Fringe
