The Road to Qatar @ C too

The Road to Qatar, a musical about a couple of New York Jews who write musical comedy being whisked away to the Middle East to write a show for some overbearing Arabs, was voted Best New Musical 2010 by the Dallas/Ft. Worth Critics, but sadly whichever virtues won it such a high accolade appear insufficient in the stripped-down Fringe performance. The absurd story, while seemingly unlikely, is reportedly true!

The songs are functional, there is much humour in the overblown Everything is Bigger in the Middle East, and some very clever rhymes in some songs such as Good Things Come in Threes, but none strike out as show stopping. Given that the show is accompanied by a recording rather than any live musicians, the piano sounds a little threadbare and would benefit from orchestration.

There are good performances, particularly from the two male leads, but while the amusing script relies on devices such as repetition for humour which are perceived as nothing but that – repititious, in this way a lot of the script dissipates into relative obscurity. Perhaps the cuts could have been sliced better to bring out the stronger material from the piece.