The sweet spot for Edinburgh fringe comedy is finding a subject the whole audience can tuck into. Gigglemug Theatre open A Jaffa Cake Musical (★★★☆☆) with tongue firmly in cheek. One question rests on humankind’s shoulders, we are told. Not the meaning of life (exit bewildered caveman from the stage) but rather, as one characteristically jolly song asks: “Is it a cake – or is it a biscuit?”
This courtroom musical presents arguments from the 1991 dispute between McVitie’s and HMRC, which sought to determine whether the full VAT charged on chocolate biscuits should also be levied on Jaffa Cakes, hitherto zero-rated as cakes. There are zesty numbers about how the treats are packaged, marketed, prepared and eaten (do you dunk them? do you use a fork?) – all contributing to the judge’s ruling.
Writer Sam Cochrane plays nervous rookie lawyer Kevin, who represents Jake (Harry Miller) for Jaffa Cakes, and battles hard-edged, high-kicking Katherine (Sabrina Messer), working for the Tax Man (Katie Pritchard, asking why shouldn’t it be Tax Woman?). Alex Prescot presides as a keyboard-playing judge during some over-familiar Hamilton-esque rap battles (neatly rhyming “lawyer” with “destroy ya”) and there is a neat spin on the cliched musical comedy subplot of a character harbouring singing ambitions. Here it’s Kevin’s parents who want him to enter showbiz and are disappointed about his legal dreams.
Ali James’s production is pacy and has a few earworms (musical direction and arrangements by Rob Gathercole). No cake or biscuit pun is left unchewed, there are Trumpian quantities of orange in the costume design and Lauren Jones has created a clever set with three sections of a Jaffa Cake used for the courtroom layout. I would have liked to learn more about how and when they were invented, and the reasoning behind HMRC’s distinctions, but this is a fun and cheerful hour with some appealing performances.
It’s a stretch to tease out the friendships between Kevin and both his client and his opponent, yet it just about works, as does the customary fringe true-to-yourself message of choosing your own definitions, regardless of others’ labels. There is even a Bake Off-worthy showstopper finale. Jaffa Cakes put a smile on your face, we’re told, and so do Gigglemug.
Across town, sweet treats really are used to contemplate big existential questions in The Gummy Bears’ Great War (★★★☆☆), a tabletop performance by the Sardinia-based company Batisfera, which specialises in tragicomedies. With room for an audience of 30, this half-hour show – performed in Italian with English surtitles – uses bucketfuls of gummy bears and a handful of plastic dinosaurs to stage an epic conflict between two nations.
The gummies wage war on the neighbouring dinos for no reason, after centuries of peace. As the sweets are lined up by performers Valentina Fadda and Leonardo Tomasi on a desk of a stage, a variety of lighting sources highlight their translucence and firm texture, making them appear obstinately robust. But they are doomed from the start: Tomasi opens his jaws, swoops down, and chomps on Raspberry Red, spitting out the remains.
Written and directed by Angelo Trofa, and told in chapters with mock-solemn voiceover narration by Tino Petilli, the performance raises unanswerable questions about the sour senselessness of violence and plays with the audience’s loyalties, less successfully adding some satirical swipes at bureaucracy. As so often with tabletop performance or object theatre about big issues, the sense of perspective swiftly parodies our shortcomings.
There’s a stab at characterising the bear troops, whose personalities often reflect their flavours (who knew there were so many?) while strobe lighting and a guitar soundtrack accompany the combat scenes. The show zeroes in on striking revelations about war: how there is no time for Lemon Yellow to grieve for Raspberry Red, for example, among the maelstrom of battle. Ultimately, it is either potently elliptical or, perhaps, has bitten off a little more than it can chew.
Batisfera’s production is deemed suitable for over-12s while A Jaffa Cake Musical is for over-eights; the audiences for both contain surprisingly few young people. Edinburgh fringe is full of shows with eye-catching titles and high concepts which then fall flat in delivery. These two make a refreshing change.
• A Jaffa Cake Musical is at Pleasance Courtyard until 26 August. The Gummy Bears’ Great War is at C Arts until 25 August
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