"First Aid". Burton Taylor Studio. 29 October 2024

When people say ‘Musical’ the first thing that comes to mind is a big-budget production like Starlight Express or Wicked. You might think that the BT Studio, with its minuscule performing area and basic facilities, is the last place to mount such a massive venture. And you’d be right.

But there is such a thing as parlour music. And First Aid is a ‘parlour musical’. It follows the gossamer-light story of Sophie and her new maybe-boyfriend Simon, as they go on a date and end up in hospital with a broken nose.

Barnaby O’Brien’s girl-meets-boy-meets-A&E-dept rom-com is an insouciant, irrepressible, warm-hearted joy. Deep and meaningful this most definitely is not. It’s as light as a feather souffle and as witty as early Tim Rice. Although set very much in the present day, and replete with modern references, there’s something appealingly old-fashioned about the genre that O’Brien has tapped into here, harking back to Ivor Novello and P.G. Wodehouse. The rhymes and jokes are more important than the characters who speak them, and the audience can sit back and enjoy the frivolity and wordplay just as they did when the Modern Major-General first trod the boards. It’s Gilbert and Sullivan go to Nando’s.

The songs are almost back to back throughout the one-hour running time, and most of them are both hilarious and catchy. Stuck in A&E With You is a standout, as are a conspiracy theorist’s anthem, the confessions of a fake doctor, and boyfriend Simon’s revelation that he has emotions (‘I cried in Spider-Man 2’*). O’Brien’s rhymes are genuinely funny (‘If your heart beats faster is it just aortic disaster?’ and ‘caught off-guard by my talk of Jean-Luc Godard’ are just two that I scribbled down). There’s a thread of observational comedy marbling through the text, with references to such things as NHS waiting times and the ever-climbing price of supermarket meal deals. And the composer/writer/director himself provides the entire musical accompaniment, live, on a simple electric piano. The sight of him between numbers earnestly tapping a battery-powered tea-light which refused to illuminate his keyboard somehow summed up the evening: ridiculous, but at the same time deeply dedicated and strangely touching.

The performers, Mimi Nanud, Iona Blair, Thaejus Ilango and Elliot Wood, as well as being uniformly note-perfect (and even pretty groovy in the occasional bits of dance) are in tune not just with the music but with the tone of the show. They seem to be having as much fun as the audience, pitching it somewhere between parody and panto.

Of course First Aid has its weak moments: the (admittedly few) serious scenes feel unnecessary, and they briefly drag the mood down. And some of the songs do seem to repeat the chorus one time too many. But the overwhelming mood of bright, friendly fun is never far away. This show has no pretensions of grandeur. It’s a delightful chamber-piece. And it suggests that more ambitious projects may be in the offing for O’Brien before too long.

This is the way the term starts: not with a whimper but a bang.


* Who didn't? 


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