Critics have been less than impressed with a new Spice Girls-themed musical.
Entitled "Viva Forever," the new musical doesn't actually have any of the members of the Spice Girls, but uses their music. The musical opened up in London's Piccadilly Theatre last week and was soundly based by critics.
Miranda Sawyer The Guardian wrote:
"There is very little to recommend this show. The songs are murdered, either by the set-up -- a discussion about middle-aged pubic hair leads, astonishingly, into 'Too Much' -- or the arrangement."
David Benedict of Variety wrote:
"The hugely partisan opening night crowd was hard pressed to work up more than a few laughs. Saunders' writing is lazy and overly familiar, he wrote, but the biggest problem is that the Spice Girls songs, however bouncy and fun, don't offer up dramatic potential. In terms of lyrics, they're mostly slogans, ceaselessly repeated."
A more damning review came from Kate Basset from the Independent:
"The show might be a vision of dumbed-down British culture feeding on itself with an inane, vampiric grin. The script by Saunders is jawdroppingly witless. At the curtain call, Beckham looked miserably embarrassed while the rest obligingly whooped,"
Daily Mail wrote: "Good for the Spice Girls. They may just have performed their greatest service. For women, for men, for the whole of humanity, in fact. They've killed the jukebox musical."
The musical is focused on a fictional character named Viva who is part of an all-girl band, and follows her music career and her relationship with her adoptive mother.
The piece is written by British comedian Jennifer Saunders and is produced by Judy Cramer, who was behind the ultra-successful musical "Mamma Mia."
The play may have been a bust with critics, but fans are eating up with the show already logging five million Euros in ticket sales.
Spice Girls (Viva Forever)
