The clue is in the title of this new comedy sci-fi musical by Mick Cooke, Gordon Davidson and Alan Wilkinson as to what it's about.
Set 100 years into the future, Earth is so overcrowded that sex has been banned, leaving shiny shell-suited virgins Largs and Jaxxon on a mission to pop their cherry by way of a one-way ticket to Mars to help repopulate a planet occupied solely by women. When they fall into the clutches of Queen Beatrice and her man-hungry daughters Pippa and Yasmin, however, they appear to have bitten off more than they can chew.
Andy Arnold's production, a collaboration between the Tron, Twentytwo Productions and Limelight, blasts off with a series of libidinous scenarios in a camp cartoon of a show that boldly goes places that taste forgot.
Arnold's production is rough around the edges, as fringe musicals should be, and is enlivened by a fistful of songs accompanied by a four-piece band led by musical director Sally Clay. There are some larger-than-life comic turns from Darren Brownlie and Mark Prendergast as Largs and Jaxxon, Marj Hogarth makes for a scarifyingly predatory Queen, while Helen McAlpine and Fiona Wood are in fine voice as the pneumatic sisters.
Gavin Mitchell steals the show with a series of bite-size cameos, from the James Bond villain pastiche of Earth's President, to the nutty professor who might well be related to Dr Strangelove. If the material sometimes doesn't match the performances, it is too throwaway to matter, and when the libidinous aliens urge us to: "Throw down your guns and pull down your pants," it is as sound advice as any.
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