Writer: Dylan MarcAurele
Director: Joe McNeice
Playing for just two nights at The Other Palace, Pop Off, Michelangelo! certainly pops with catchy tunes and funny lines. Telling the story of an imagined friendship between two powerful artists (and power-bottoms), Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, this new musical is irreverent but also unexpectedly charming. If only history were so camp, it’d be worth rebirthing this Renaissance.
However, Dylan MarcAurele’s show begins with Beyoncé’s Renaissance, the only renaissance that some might know. But, as the narrator tells us, there was another renaissance, a first renaissance, and although we go back in time to the 15th Century, this is still a very modern musical with allusions to pop culture today. Da Vinci doesn’t just dream of inventing flying machines and perpetual water wheels, but he also dreams of inventing Italian-American actor Marisa Tomei.
Da Vinci shows Michelangelo his designs over breakfast, but their plans for the future are shattered when Michelangelo’s mother (Maiya Quansah-Breed) tells the men that the Vatican has embarked on a crusade against homosexuals and that their barber, who both men fancied, has just been hanged. She goes on to tell them that God doesn’t love sodomites.
So, in order to get the Pope to change his mind, Da Vinci and Michelangelo go to art school in the hope that they will receive the patronage of the Holy Father. But it’s here where their friendship is tested. Who will win the Pope’s favour, and can they escape the villainous Medici Family?
It’s all very clever, and it appears that MarcAurele has done his homework, giving us enough facts amidst all the anachronisms. The songs – a mixture of musical theatre and pop – fit smoothly into the story with the opening number, Let Me Be Your Renaissance Man, a kind of track that a sassy Steps would sing. The title song is also a blast.
Unsurprisingly, the Pope (Paul Toulson) and his bishop (Lucy Carter) are portrayed as dangerous bigots, but Pop Off, Michelangelo is not overtly irreligious, with one of the best songs, a rather sweet song about God and Jesus. And this charm, filthy as it may be in other songs, is the musical’s strong point. Our two artist heroes are innocents despite their predilection for sex with men. Max Eade is in fine voice as a young Michelangelo, while Aidan MacColl‘s Leonardo is hilarious, oscillating between wisecracks and naiveté.
At 70 minutes, the show is perfect fringe material, although it is dwarfed by Other Palace’s cavernous size. It would be more at home in a smaller theatre, where the audience is closer and could really join in with the rousing closing number, An Eternity With You.
Runs until 5 November 2024
The Reviews Hub Score
Poptastic
