WW Reviews

Professor Where follows the head writer of the TV show ‘Professor Where’ as he is beginning to detach from the show he loves due to the pressures and stresses of writing. He is then transported into the universe of Professor Where and goes on an adventure with The Professor and his female companion and rediscovers his love for The Professor and why he began writing for the show.

The musical had some interesting ideas and a good premise which worked well and was easy to follow which could have been difficult given the problems of time and space travel. Using the character of the head writer manoeuvring The Professor as though he were a puppet was a clever idea and I wished it had been used more and used in the universe of The Professor. Having the head writer create scenes and then have The Professor, like a puppet, act them out could have created a more unique story. The other scene that caught my attention was the ‘Cell Block Tango’ of The Professor’s assistants. This could have been extremely funny and I wish they had used all assistants but one of the positions was filled by the head writer. All of the ideas stated above could have been funny but were not executed well enough to actually be funny.

The musical was an hour and a half and much of the material could have been cut particularly the overly long and drawn out regeneration scene which involved the head writer shooting The Professor over and over and The Professor continuously regenerating. This was not funny although the actors on stage could not contain their laughter at their own jokes.

The musical fell down badly in this regard as the actors appeared to be laughing at their own material rather than performing for the audience. A phrase that is often used as positive feedback in reviews is: “You could tell the actors were having a good time.” Just because the cast is enjoying themselves does not necessarily reflect a good show. This was the case with Professor Where. The actors breaking character all the time to laugh meant the performance ended up feeling like a school show rather than a professional production.

The saving grace for this musical was that all the cast could sing and the songs were generally well written although forgettable. I have more sympathy for this show, thus the two stars, than others I saw as this show was crowd funded and was clearly created by fans of Doctor Who wanting to express their love for the original show and find empathy for the writers working on it. Had this been a professional production with more money I would have been annoyed by the performance and had given it zero to one star.

This musical had potential and did offer some interesting ideas but none of material was well executed and so the musical ended up feeling amateur. With some serious reworking and slimming down of this production as well as treating the show as a professional endeavour it could potentially work better.

Performance:
Wednesday 21st August 2024
21:55
theSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall – Theatre 2

Written by: Cassie Wicks

Directed by: Simone Balakrishna; Cassie Wicks

Cast: