The Camden People’s Theatre has a charming, well-equipped small theatre a few minutes’ walk from Euston Station.    It seems to have a loyal and enthusiastic audience, and it has assembled a cast of six energetic and not untalented young people. Someone there came up with a timely and interesting idea – a musical on the absurdity of Brexit.  Maria Who? are a migrant led company that aims to give voice to migrant artists.

And then they produced a script of such towering banality that I could hardly wait for the final bow.

The six actors – I thought it was three men and three women, but the programme lists four women and two men – arrive in long red robes, and fairly soon remove them to reveal black bathing costumes which they wear throughout.  At one point the tallest of the men and the shortest of the women appear to have a wrestling match on the floor, though I could not work out why.

Sometimes one of them, as a candidate for the honour of being Miss Brexit, puts on a splendid costume. The others ask the candidate questions, and a member of the audience is occasionally called up to adjudicate between two of them.  

Just occasionally there are flashes of wit.  One of the questions is “Who built the Tower of London?”  The correct answer turns out to be “slaves.”

I imagine it’s supposed to be political drama, but it is neither dramatic nor particularly political. It does not tell a story.  There are no characters who start in one place and finish in another.  And it does not really have a political attitude.  There is a show to be written about the absurdity of Brexit, but it doesn’t attempt that.  (In fact, it would be a very hard show to write.  Brexit defeats satire, because how do you satirise Brexit?).  

Camden People’s Theatre wants to give young performers a chance, but it must give them better material to work on than this.