Fringe Review: Shitty Mozart

Richard Bath finds proof that ‘just because you can, it doesn’t mean you should’ at this one man show.

★★

The premise of this show is that Mozart was cloned, but that because the boffins used one of Amadeus’s pubes, the sub-optimal result was a replica with next to no musical talent.

This one-man multimedia concerto was written and performed by Aaron Nemo (a writer for the Late Show With Stephen Colbert), who has crafted a show of quite staggering technical intricacy that must have taken a spectacular amount of work to prepare.

Nemo raps, delivers homilies and plays instruments he invented, all to the background of cartoon illustrations of varying quality.

There’s an indecent degree of vulgarity (I hated the interminable sketch about the copulating mice and pigeons) leavened with a couple of laugh out loud moments, but mainly I spent the whole hour marvelling at just how much effort had gone into the American’s show.

It wasn’t dire, but nor was it as funny as it was clever – this show is perhaps proof that just because you can, it doesn’t mean you should.

Gilded Balloon Patter House – Nip
Aug 5-26

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