By Peter Maddern
It is doubtful that any production will rival the film, Spinal Tap, as the greatest rock’n’roll spoof of all time but the Saints of British Rock provide great fun in having a go on the theatre stage.
When we join them, the band has split from its hey days of the 1960s but the memories and flash backs run thick and fast due not only to their longings of the past but more than copious quantities of drugs, comprised in part by their ‘rock’n’roll crystals’.
The two main band members are Rocco Hercules Somershire, a red haired, shirtless, delusional mad man and Jib Frombroffits, a Mr Bendy legs singer who possesses a permanent cockney sneer.
Done as a mockumentary, thanks to a ‘live’ broadcast by BB7 on their ‘What is they thinking?’ show, these two space cadets and three other accompanying musos relive the glory days complete with numerous transcendings of time and space that include meeting up with Merlin at Stone Henge before Rocco knocks off King Arthur’s wife. The original songs, which include the occasional riff you will recognise, hardly flatter the humble rock lyricist in real life but the various videos of drug fuelled fantasies will fully recall the days of the Beatles and Rolling Stones and induce a strong yearning of wishing you had been there with them too.
Thanks to their intense love of the Queen and dislike of the French, the Saints of British Rock somehow get it all back together again by the end before collapsing into various stupors.
All great fun and older Fringe goers will find plenty to enjoy.
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