Radio Deluxembourg

Atomic era B-movie meets Saturday morning kids’ TV show in this utterly bonkers sci-fi comedy musical about an evil alien despot and his intergalactic radio station. So great are Earthling pop sensations Jimmy, Cherry and their pet chimp Boots that an overlord from a faraway galaxy takes the initiative to kidnap them for the benefit of all the 13 galaxies he governs. With Boots in captivity and planet Earth a press of a button away from obliteration (“I do it all the time, I’m totally desensitised to it”), Jimmy and Cherry have little choice but to do their master’s bidding, staging strange radio plays and plugging gypsum products as the hot new hosts of Radio Deluxembourg.

It’s heartening to think that somewhere out there, aliens may be laughing their tentacles off tuning into this peculiar variety show from Quattro Gatti Theatre Company. But for humankind at its current evolutionary stage, this is a chillingly weird way to spend an hour.

For a show dedicated to building up momentum and excitement for its musical numbers, the songs are bafflingly lo-fi and often even out of tune. The cartoonish slapstick comedy is so resolutely loyal to clichés that it starts to become endearing once we recover from our jaw-dropping astonishment.

And for such a deliberately wacky show, there’s an incomprehensible lethargy to it. Have the performers lost interest in it, or are we actually staring into the po-faced countenance of avant-garde comedy? Who knows, but while they boldly go where no show has gone before, you’d be wiser staying at home.