Exposure: The Musical, St James Theatre, review: 'Decent songs can't save a baffling plot'

There’s a story behind Exposure: The Musical – and it’s hard to escape the feeling that it’s a little more interesting than the baffling tale that’s made it to the stage. Mike Dyer, who’s responsible for the musical’s concept, book, lyrics and music, is a fascinating character. He's a musician who's toured with Thin Lizzy, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Black Sabbath. After performing in Blood Brothers, he made the unlikely transition from stadium rock to British musical theatre. And while recovering from the death of his father, and a life-threatening motorcycle accident, he decided to pen a great British musical of his own, full of the rock songs he loved.

Twelve years and two abortive productions later, here we are in the St James Theatre in London. Downstairs, a revival of Richard O’Brien’s bonkers flop musical The Stripper is flailing its way through a summer-long run. And in the cavernous main house, the stage houses a story with the sickly, inscrutable momentum of a fever dream. Our hero Jimmy Tucker is a photographer who, after some plot, is tasked with snapping the seven deadly sins for the devil. Quite why evil incarnate needs a professionally produced portfolio of his handiwork is unclear, unless he's on the hunt for a new job in a better musical. But nothing about this unfathomable plot really makes sense.

Jimmy Tucker starts his career in Africa, in scenes that make Band Aid's Do They Know it's Christmas? look like a nuanced portrayal of the culture of a diverse continent: pictures of emaciated children, courtesy of an unlikely partnership with Getty Images, fill the stage as he embarks on a string of white saviour clichés. After he returns to London, he’s haunted by the legacy of his father, a great photographer whose ghost will pop up at regular intervals through the musical. There, he meets his love interest, a homeless woman who hawks angels she's cut from Coca-Cola cans on the streets, her perpetually bleeding hands a metaphor for her Christ-like devotion to recycling. His other love interest is Pandora, an unholy blend of Amy Winehouse and Blondie who snarls her way through an incredibly commercial set of pop-rock songs designed to demonstrate her profound artistic integrity.

This musical is warm-hearted stuff, glistening with bags of energy and super-slick production values: and some of the songs are well-crafted and genuinely catchy. But beyond that, it’s evident that director Phil Whillmott has had one hell of a job on his hands: in the programme notes, he mentions that Mike Dyer's original script was nearly three times the length. And after a meandering finale set in the afterlife that puts Carousel’s notoriously bizarre second act to shame, it’s harder to forgive this plucky musical’s sins.