One Man Musical by Flo & Joan review

Finally, Andrew Lloyd Webber gets the attention he deserves. After 21 musicals on subjects such as the Bible, Cats, trains, and whatever Aspects of Love was about, he has decided to break with form and turn the spotlight on himself in this one-man Fringe musical about his life. Except who are those two women sitting behind him at keyboard and drums? They look suspiciously like musical comedy stars Flo and Joan…

Nowhere in the marketing material for One Man Musical is it clear that it’s actually about Andrew Lloyd Webber. And nowhere within the show itself do Flo, Joan or the terrifyingly committed George Fouracres as ALW ever admit that this is anything other than the literal, actual Andrew Lloyd Webber talking – and singing – us through his life.

It’s partly the outrageousness of the conceit that makes this show so very good. Is it a legal minefield?, Fouracres asks in song. Yes, he sings, but on we go. Set to songs by Flo & Joan (Rosie and Nicola Dempsey), which cleverly ape ALW’s penchant for unearned modulation, inexplicable time signatures and soaring melody lines, he talks us through his life, from his love of architecture through his relationship with Tim Rice (played, yes, by a bag of rice) to Cinderella, TikTok and beyond.

Flo & Joan clearly love musical theatre. They’ve crammed in so many in-jokes that nerds will be completely satiated (ALW talks about shoes made of leather harvested from Patti LuPone’s back). But they’ve also just crammed in jokes. And those jokes are made even funnier by Fouracres’ absurdly overblown performance as the erstwhile Lord, bloviating and prancing, engaging in crowd-work and occasionally swigging from a bottle of Yazoo.

Is the show a bit cruel? If you’re ALW, maybe yes. It’s also brilliantly written, superbly performed and surprisingly thoroughly researched. Flo & Joan make an excellent case that we don’t need to cry for Andrew Lloyd Webber – we only need to laugh.