Music and mayhem

Tony Blair — the Musical / Gilded Balloon; Tony! The Blair Musical / Chambers St; Yellow Hands / St George’s West; Jihad: the Musical / Chambers St; The Bacchae / King’s Theatre

Here’s the formula for satire at the Fringe. Take a scary concept, stick ‘the musical’ after it and you’ve got a catchy title and an audience. Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Saddam, Osama — all been done before. This year it’s Blair. Twice over, in fact. Like we haven’t had enough of him? Tony Blair — the Musical is so toothless it belongs in an old people’s home. The cast are genial but the presentation is slapdash. Tony’s floppy fringe droops down to his nose, Gordon’s Scots accent is missing, Mandy wears a beard and Prezza is played by a lanky redhead. A few good things: Clare Short is brilliantly done as a truculent hysteric who rasps out an over-Brummy dialect through clenched teeth, and Blunkett gets laughs by bumping into chairs and making speeches to people who are standing behind him.