Viva Forever! – review | Music | The Observer - The Guardian

At the end of the premiere of Viva Forever!, all five Spice Girls lined up on stage. Emma (wearing long lace) and Mel C (twisty tweed) did nothing in particular. Mel B, sprayed in sparkles, straddled her legs and said "fuck". A surprisingly dowdy Posh Spice stood apart, nervously balancing her jacket on her shoulders, as though waiting in line to be bullied. And Geri, wearing the kind of sugar plum frock a three-year-old would choose for a fairy party, grabbed the mic and burbled like a three-year-old sugar plum fairy at a party. I've seen more natural-born stars flogging bubble guns at Hamleys.

But then that was the point of the Spice Girls – their ordinariness. Almost every small girl goes through a jazz hands stage, when all she wants to do is put on performances and formation dance in a frou-frou frock. The Spice Girls just never grew out of it. You could argue that they ushered in the current Saturday-night telly talent show era, given that they were managed by Simon Fuller, who invented the first version, Pop Idol. Also because they were living proof that the required X-factor is not the heart-stopping talent of Beyoncé or Janelle Monáe, nor even the upstart revolution of Plan B or Dizzee, but the ditsy ebullience of a trier. If that shower can make it, so can we all! We just have to believe!

An X Factor-type programme forms the basis of Viva Forever!, the new musical based on the pop hits of the Spice Girls. Written by Jennifer Saunders and produced by Judy Craymer, who was behind the smash Abba show Mamma Mia!, it's aimed at the late 20s/early 30s woman who was a fan of the Spices in her teens. The story goes like this: Viva, who's in a four-girl singing group called Eternity, gets through to the end stages of TV talent show Starseekers. Her mentor/judge, Simone, forces her, live on air, to go solo, and later to reveal to the press that she's adopted, for a good backstory. Will Viva find her real mother? Or will she come to appreciate her adopted mother, Lauren, and her Eternity friends? There's a teeny, tiny spark of a romance, which feels shovelled in as a last resort. But that's it really.

Saunders has written some nice lines – "You're in Vera Wang. You're wearing a Wang" – and several of the songs are better than you remember, especially Spice Up Your Life. Simone is portrayed with funny force by Sally Dexter. But if on TV the X Factor format feels tired, on stage it's not even twitching. There is no more to say about such shows. They're exploitative and demeaning, they teach people that celebrity is more important than integrity... Tell it to the pope. Apparently he's not a Protestant.

The other story arc – that Viva is adopted – splutters to a halt. Everything is set up for it to be Simone: Mama sung by Viva, Lauren and Simone in the first half shouts the plot point up to the balcony. But instead the door pulls back to reveal Minty, Simone's Bubbles-type assistant, saying lamely: "Oh I Googled and Googled but couldn't find her." This means that Simone's big emotional moment in Act 2, singing I Turn to You to Viva, means… nothing at all. Very strange.

Oh dear, there is very little to recommend this show. The songs are murdered, either by the set-up – a discussion about middle-aged pubic hair leads, astonishingly, into Too Much – or the arrangement. There are some sparky performances from Hatty Preston as Minty and Tamara Wall as bimbo judge Karen, and a nice scene between Lauren and Mitch, her hopeful lover. It's clear that everyone involved wants this to be a women-affirming show: there are very few male parts and they're all cyphers. But, sadly, so are all the female parts. Viva and her friends are bland and indistinguishable; everyone else is a cliche. There's not much cockle-warming, despite the performers' best efforts. There is some glitz. But it says something when you find yourself scanning the audience for entertainment (there's Cilla! And Michael Caine!); when the most riveting plot point of the evening is whether or not Posh Spice will ever acknowledge the rest of her old band.

Still. What do I know? I gave my spare ticket to Lorraine, a fan who'd travelled over especially from Ireland to wave at her idols from behind a barrier. She fell in love with the Spice Girls when she was 11 years old. And she absolutely adored the whole thing; so there.