‘Why Am I So Single?’ Review: Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss’ Musical Follow-Up to ‘Six’ Disappoints in the West End
variety.comDavid Benedict “There is,” as Stephen Sondheim once groaned, “nothing worse than great expectations.” It may seem unfair to evoke a master when reviewing only the second show from a young British musical team, but when their debut was the Tony-winning, Tudors-Got-Talent sensation that is “Six,” expectations are sky high.
Sadly, although their follow-up shares the same sassy Gen-Z tone, where “Six” brilliantly found the perfect form for its content, the heartfelt but disappointing “Why Am I So Single?” is fatally slack.
What might have energized an intermission-free 90 minutes flounders long before its two-and-a-half hours are up.Part of the problem is that its creators, Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, are so self-conscious.
After an arch prologue with masks and voice-over, best friend protagonists Oliver (sparky Jo Foster) and Nancy (Leesa Tulley) knock down the fourth wall to let us in on the act that they reflect Marlow and Moss who are trying to write “a big fancy musical.” And, guess what, the musical they write – and we watch – turns out to be about them and their singledom, bolstered, they inform us, by musical theater references.In the end, that translates to an awful lot of sometimes-boisterous navel-gazing on the sofa with highly performative, queer, non-binary Oliver and more one-note, supportive Nancy, plus one-liners at the expense of “Mamma Mia!” and quotes from other show’s lyrics, principally, yes, “Oliver!” It’s noticeable that among the shows they don’t reference are those that trod a similarly self-reflexive path from the Pulitzer-winning “A Strange Loop” and the zesty, taut “title of show,” all the way back to “Say, Darling,” Comden & Green and Jule Styne’s musical play about putting on the musical of “The.
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