When I hear a song in an advert, I sometimes wonder about the people who write them, but I didn’t realise how much I needed a satirical musical about advertising jingles. Jingle Street is a new musical that provides an absurd and hilarious look into the world of advertising executives and the moral dilemma of writing jingles for them.
One day an exhausted jingle writer named Colin wakes up to find that he can only speak in jingles. The only way he is able to relieve this burden is by talking to Jasmine, a headstrong Green Party campaigner that knocks on his door, who would hate his guts if she ever found out he worked for an advertising agency that promotes fossil fuels and cigarettes. However, desperate to be free of his ‘jingle syndrome’, he joins the Green Party to the reluctance of Jasmine.
The tone of the piece is silly and tongue in cheek, and the characters are painted in very broad strokes. All four of the main cast are very funny and charming, and completely sell what Jingle Street is trying to achieve, however Holofernes, the cartoonishly evil boss of the advertising company, steals every scene he is in. He’s played with such an over-the-top Lord Flashheart-like dynamism that works really well with both the humour and message of the show.
Jingle Street has a funny meta-joke about how one character doesn’t like plays that are too simple and ‘contrived satires of capitalism’ which is meant to lampshade the tone of the show itself, however I don’t think this gives the show enough credit. Though the romantic plot plays out more or less how you might expect, the show through the character of Jasmine touches on a very relevant theme of the frustration of fighting for a better world in the face of powerful corporations. There is one beautiful song in particular about falling in love with a losing battle, which is such a touching and nuanced sentiment that hits hard amongst all the chaotic silliness.
Jingle Street is an incredibly creative musical that is not only very funny but gets across an important and interesting message. Though it makes me sad that I will never hear a jingle in real life as great as ‘there was nothing wrong with Joseph Stalin / that couldn’t be solved with a Carling’!
