The Trap: Bad Musical

The Trap, an established London-based sketch comedy trio composed of Dan Mersh, Paul Litchfield and Jeremy Limb, return to the Fringe with their latest ode to bad theatre, having spent a decade concocting their Bad Play trilogy. This year, they set their sights on the musical theatre genre, shredding it apart with intentional technical failures, awful dance steps, a clichéd storyline and, of course, several very, very terrible songs.

Mersh plays a small town man who dreams of moving to the big city of London/Edinburgh — the confusion between the two being one of the running gags of the show — while Litchfield and Limb tackle a variety of roles, including Mersh’s parents, members of the BNP, a waiter, a homeless man and, eventually, an alien and a robot.

There are some amusing moments, namely, the replacement of their lead actress by a balloon on a stick and a funny little ditty about the BNP, but the handful of gags stretched out over an hour soon become very tedious and a bit boring. Of course, the intent of the whole thing is to be bad, but the concept of a musical parody just seems a tiny bit outdated.

It’s probably important to mention that the sea of old people around me are having a grand time, so maybe it’s just me.