Make no mistake Scissorhandz is a parody tribute to Tim Burton’s film of similar name. Those out for a loud and enjoyable night out will be happy enough, but those seeking a respectful homage to the master’s 1990 fantasy may feel stung by a lack of veneration.
Rather like Scissorhands is made from spare parts and love, this show is created from a mish-mash of styles and a will to entertain. Part musical, part concert and part party, it hangs together by the strength of some invisible force rather than coherent vision.
Themes of exclusion and acceptance remain the driver to the story of Scissorhands, a creation of the Inventor who dies unexpectedly leaving the young being alone in a remote house, where they are found by Peg, the kindly local Avon Lady.
Going to live in town with Peg, her daughter Kim and husband Bill, Scissorhands becomes an irresistible curiosity to those who live nearby and a threat to Kim’s boyfriend, Jim.
Neighbours Joyce, Esmerelda and Helen are drawn with broad strokes in strong colours, their brightness concealing prejudice and ill-intent toward Scissorhands, with bluntly villainous Jim being the only one to wear his hostility openly, even before Kim’s attraction to Scissorhands becomes obvious.
Adam King’s lighting design strives to elevate the show to spectacular, but the flat-fronted, two-level, stationary set on which the rays fall doesn’t pull its weight. With deliberately comic unsubtlety, the colour coding in Abby Clarke’s costume design and the celebration of buckles and studs that adorn Jordan Kai Burnett’s outfit as Scissorhands hit their mark.
Burnett makes for a bewitchingly winsome hero, Scissorhands’s gender neutrality as menacing to small-town America as their unorthodox physiognomy.
They played Scissorhands in the US, from where the show hails, and although vocally underpowered in the songs, their performance is consistently watchable, interesting and surprisingly nuanced, capturing the orphan’s vulnerability with expressive movements and facial expressions.
Peg, unhappily locked into a life of frumpy housewife, feels a connection with misfit Scissorhands. Peg’s humanity and the pair’s unlikely affinity are central to the integrity of the show’s message of inclusivity, and Emma Williams brings in spades everything needed as the ditsy homemaker who finds her inner champion.
Burnett’s duets with Williams, ”Beautiful Weirdos” written by Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo for the show, and with Lauren Jones as Kim, Sara Bareilles’s “Gravity”, are two of the occasional oases of sincerity in a show that is generously endowed with over-amplified songs belted out with passion / angst / energy (as applies) set at 12 out of ten, which even for a parody is fatiguing.
In all, the jukebox score is a slightly odd mix of songs that allows Dionne Gipson to take the roof off as the Inventor, bores with an overlong mock-gospel reworking of “Heaven is a Place on Earth” and thrills with “I’m Afraid of Americans”.
Largely though, writer Bradley Bredeweg’s explosively camp spree succeeds in repositioning the original story’s central theme so that the fantasy romance stands alongside a timely message about acceptance and taking a stand against intolerance.