Southern Fail The Musical, Brighton Fringe 2017

Southern Fail The Musical, Bosco Tent, Spiegel Garden, Brighton Fringe, 3 June 2017

By Ollie Wilson 

For Brighton-to-London commuters on Southern Rail last year, the service provided for them in exchange for their £4,500-plus season tickets was beyond a joke. . . but the Treason Show cast has made a great job of seeing the funny side of it.

Southern Fail The Musical is a popular (the tent was packed) and hilarious pastiche of pop songs with the lyrics suitably doctored (Sailing becomes Failing etc.) to highlight the incompetence of possibly the world's worst railway company, rebranded "Southern Fail" or "Bastard Rail", and was brilliantly performed by Mark Brailsford, Annie Harris and Javier Rasero.


That a cast of three could play long-suffering passengers, chief executives, railway staff, ministers and even the Southern Fail poster boy in a fast-moving sketch-and-song show shows is testament to their great versatility and skill.

They did not quite get the full story, missing out Southern's use of Revenue Protection Officers to persecute unfortunate passengers, their legally untrained prosecutor who tried to criminalise the customers, or the Government's full culpability in taking all the ticket revenue and then washing their hands of Southern when the going got tough, but we can't have everything.

The show did at least have a good old crack at useless Tory minister Chris Grayling.

Brailsford, Harris and Rasero did a remarkable job in turning a hard look at a morally bankrupt company into a fun, sing-along hour and a quarter of unforgettable entertainment.

It was also quite cathartic for commuters, although the Monday train journey still comes around like a bad penny.

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