We've played Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens in a lot of different ways in a lot of different places over the years, but wherever it went it always got good press.
Take a look at some of our favourite clippings from over the years...
“Show people - booting up!"
“Imagine a combination of Rocky Horror, Russ Meyer and the Glam Metal Detectives and you've barely scratched the surface of this spectacular plastic fetish mission with original music and lyrics from brand new theatre company, Antic Disposition.”
“Director Mike Fidler says “We were given the venue first and then wrote the musical. From start to finish it will have taken us ten weeks.”
“We want our audience to have fun and be part of the action. If they want to heckle, they can heckle. Too many audiences are expected to just sit there and take what's given to them in the name of entertainment. Our prime function is to give them what they want… What I really want to do, and I think Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens goes some way to achieving this, is combine theatre with the atmosphere of a pop concert. Music dancing and visual spectacle is what audiences in the nineties want and that's certainly what they're going to get with this show!”
Tara Conlon, The Stage 10/08/95
“This devil of a good show"
“There is wall-to-wall bad taste and fun to be found at C Venue 19, Overseas House. Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens is the Rocky Horror Show for the Millennium.”
“A glam-rock space odyssey into high camp and extra-terrestrial sleaze, it is set in a bar that is literally out of this world. Presiding over the place is David Roden's sinisterly sexy Saucy Jack, whose penchant for murder by stiletto heel is fed and fought by some of the best raunchy music in town.”
Jack Tinker - The Daily Mail - 01/09/95
“Take one late-night audience and insert them into a cabaret bar in Frottage 3, somewhere beyond the universe. Tank them up on tubes of interstellar cyberlager, cryonically cool and unburdened by taste, then catapault them into a glam-rock extravaganza where sexual references float about like bits of space junk but everybody keeps their kit on.”
Jeremy Hodges, The Sunday Times - 20/08/95
“Familiar with bubble-wrap, that soft plastic useful for keeping new electrical gadgets safe from harm? Against all odds, it has become the Fringe fashion of this year, setting off audience participation routines of Rocky Horror-style proportions…”
“The show that's causing all the fuss is Saucy Jack and The Space Vixens, a space opera set on the planet Frottage 3 in which one of the heroines – a plastic smuggler – sports glitter boots and a waistcoat cut from bubble wrap. Despite the hot weather, audiences have also begun to dress in the stuff. It has become the party night out, with van loads of revellers vying with each other for the finest design. Alternatively some simply wrap themselves in it from head to toe, so much so that they look like an army of unpacked fridge freezers….”
Robert Yates, The Guardian - 22/08/95
“MANICALLY FUNNY PLAY CAMPS IT UP IN OUTER SPACE"
“This is an amazing production: awesomely energetic, incredibly funny and furiously, blatantly camp! There is singing, dancing, stripping, lashings of lurex and leather. It is also extremely tightly and professionally structured. There are no dull moments – the cast is stunning at every twist, turn and galactic gyration. The tiny theatre is transformed into a sleazy pick-up joint, complete with tables, peanuts, a live band and an operative bar.”
“Ending with the unprecedented sight of the audience leaping to their feet and dancing along with the cast, this show is a fantastic Fringe Experience.”
Amanda Hooton, The Scotsman - 28/08/95
“Saturday Night Fever meets up with Rocky Horror and Tank Girl for a pint or six of Pan Galactic Gargelblaster in this glam, camp and chaotic late-night floorshow…”
“An excellent way to finish off a day of Fringe freneticism or set you up for a night's clubbing.”
Thom Dibden, The Stage – 07/09/95
“Once in a while you see a show and enjoy it so much you could sit through the whole experience again. Well this is it! Saucy Jack is the best show I've seen this year. The show is not just set in a futuristic space bar – Saucy Jack's – it is a bar. The audience is the clientele in this story of the search for an interstellar serial killer…See this before it's snapped up by London and you'll be singing 'Glitterboots Saved My Life' for at least a week.”
“kill for a ticket!"
Greg Russell, The Edinburgh Evening News - 01/09/95
“With the theatre transformed into a sleazy pick-up joint, this is a dazzling Fringe experience about the redemptive power of disco...”
“Energetic, funny and wildly camp, with sparkling one-liners and excellent funky music”
The Scotsman -31/08/95
“In the world of intergalactic camp Saucy Jack is Prince of the Cabaret. He is also a killer, subjugating staff at his nightclub to bolster delusions of grandeur and work off the frustrations of a broken childhood and heart. But his oppressive rule is about to end as the Space Vixens, legendary police force of the cosmos, arrive to investigate. Closets get opened, girl gets girl and the audience gets to join in.
It's Rocky Horror dressed up in glitter boots but C Too is a perfect venue, enclosing the bonanza of smoke and light effects in an intimate cavern of song from which spectators cannot withdraw. The numbers are belted out with a finely tuned vengeance and there isn't a performance out of line.”
Alexander Linklater, The Stage – 13/09/96
“Glam, camp and totally over the top!"
“Jack's back, bigger and better than ever. If you want a late night party, hit Saucy Jakc's space bar...”
“Everyone wants to be a Space Vixen and the result is a feast of glam-rock"
Greg Russell, The Edinburgh Evening News - 13/08/96
“After a year in orbit, this Fringe First winner returns, as outrageously fabulous as ever...”
“The audience find itself in Saucy Jack's intergalactic nightclub on the planet Frottage III, where an array of polymorphously peverse characters appear. Into their midst come the Space Vixens, glitzy crusaders for universal justice in search of the Sling Back Killer...”
This plot is the framework for Charlotte Mann's hilarious lines with wonderfully anthemic songs and stomping music by Jonathan Croose and Robin Forrest. The whole show is both the highest of high camp and an exhilarating hymn to individual freedom.”
Colin Affleck, The Scotsman - 23/08/96
“SPACE VIXENS IN BURLINGTON? DURING AN ELECTION SEASON?
YES, BY GOD, WE ARE SAVED! BY THE POWER OF DISCO, NO LESS.
“Finally, a politic of meaning. A politic of passion. A politic of sexuality. A politic of...camp. Yes, you got it, a politic of camp.
In this autumnal election season with the landscape void of meaningful politics, there is a mighty musical in a small bar at the top of Church Street. In Valley Girl meets Star Trek meets The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens rocks the mainstream world at 135 Pearl.
Featuring thespian cross-dressers, bartenders and glitter boot donning vixens, Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens is the best action this fall. Glitter Boots with the power of disco, that is.
If you're tired of the politics of vacuity. If you've heard enough of bridges, soccer moms and alpha males, then there is relief. Forget school uniforms; glitter boots are a wonderful notion in our virtueless society. So let your inhibitions down and escape to a place where the Orgasmulator exists. Go Space Vixens! Saucy Jack is the coolest, most outrageous, most raucous musical I have ever had the privilege of witnessing. Get there! The day after I saw it one of the audience members smirked to me "that was not just another night in Burlington.” No. It wasn't. And I'm grateful. Yes, Glitter boots can save your life too.”
David Lines, The Vermont Times - 23/10/96
“Rivalling rocky...Space Vixens just want to have fun"
“The crowd loved it. By the end they were all on their feet, grooving to All I Need is Disco.”
“Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens is as subtle as a gold lamé station wagon and more contrived than the Republican party platform. It's campier than spending two weeks in the woods riding horses and stitching leather wallets. But there's nothing wrong with stupid fun!"
Bryan Stratton, Seven Days - 23/10/96
“This show is a deliciously savage disco
musical taking place in a dark, cosmic corner of the universe...”
“In a college town starved for good, live theater, Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens comes to a vampy, campy rescue. The wild romp through the intergalactic sleaze-world will satiate your deep and secret longings for off-Broadway charisma and then some.”
“Upon hearing the first chorus of Glitter Boots you will forget everything boring that has ever happened in your life. You have now entered Saucy Jack's...there's no turning back.”
“We were bombarded from all directions with plastic bondage wear, sexy Space Vixens and a soundtrack that makes 70's disco sound like a broken eight-track owned by Karen Carpenter...”
“This wild camp-filled show changes our minds about live performance musicals and maybe, just maybe, a little bit about life on earth.”
Kate Corcelli, Burlington Bohemian – October 1996
“What a show!”
“I had no idea what to expect but gained a cosmic musical experience. Instead of a theatre, you entered Saucy Jack's, a seedy night club on the planet Frottage III.”
“Clever dialogue and catchy, hand clapping songs unfold the storyline and introduce each character. Loves, lusts and fetishes are displayed to a rousing disco beat and a wealth of new and original songs.”
“It is set to become a cult phenomenon.”
Sheila Kay, Musical Stages – Autumn 1996
“Booby - Scarlett O'Hara meets Betty Boop with a Cindy Beale wig – dreams of joining the Space Vixens, an intergalactic group of glamour-pusses who fight crime in the name of disco.”
“There is more innuendo than a tea party with the Kenneth Williams appreciation society...”
“The performances are literally out of this world!"
“All this and costumes with more sequins than Shirley Bassey's dressing room make for a musical hip-thrustingly enjoyable night out in the atmospheric Hackney Empire. Sod the West End, the East End's where it's happening. Recommended.”
Paul Joseph, Arena, 27/11/97
“SAUCY JACK THE LEADER OF THE PACK AT HACKNEY EMPIRE"
The Stage, 24/07/97
“It's like Casablanca done by Boney M
and sexier than Blake's Seven.”
“The cast raise the roof. They sing, they dance and they make ABBA look butch. When I wasn't laughing I was grinning from ear to ear, and it was a dirty grin!"
James Goss, Oxford Times 12/9/97
“About as subversive as a lava lamp!”
The Times - 18/11/97
“A MONSTER HIT!”
Nick Martin, The Guardian 26/10/97
“I loved every minute of this glam-rock musical. The best party in town!”
Steve Pratt, Portsmouth News 27/10/97
“It serves up an orgy of kinky sci-fi.”
“The setting is Saucy Jack's café, a sleazy dive on the planet Frottage III. Its cabaret stars are being slain by a psychopathic killer who murders his victims with a sequinned sling back stiletto shoe. Only the Space Vixens – a polymorphously perverse intergalactic Charlie's Angels – can save the day...”
Jason Best, The Stage – 13/11/97
“INTERGALACTIC MUSICAL IS A GLITTERING SUCCESS!"
Glittering costumes, catchy tunes, plenty of surprises and toe-tapping numbers such as Plastic, Leather and Love and Glitter Boots Saved My Life – and even the most restrained members of the audience will be tempted to go away from this show singing All I Need is Disco.”
Amanda Wilkinson, Hackney Gazette 27/11/97
“I knew we had a hit when I saw commuters changing into tights and stilettos in the toilets before the show.” Says Charlotte Mann of the musical she co-wrote with three friends, Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens.“I'd describe it as post-modern camp.”
“So dust off your boots and bubble-wrap and get down to the funkiest show in the West End”
Metro - 14/03/98
“THEY'RE WILD, THEY'RE RUDE
AND THEY MAY SAVE THE WEST END”
“A killer who uses sling backs to stab his victims? Yes, the racy musical Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens, which opens at the Queen's Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue on Wednesday, will fit nicely into the 'smack and sodomy' genre that has been bringing a new audience to the West End.”
A sort of racy cross between Star Trek and The Rocky Horror Show via Valley of the Dolls, Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens continues in their camp vein and has attracted a cult following en route to the Queen's.”
“Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens is part of a shift that is making West End theatre exciting again to young audiences in a way it probably hasn't been since a new breed of musical burst on the scene in the 1960s and early 1970s with Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar, Godspell and The Rocky Horror Show...”
“There are signs that theatre is attracting a different kind of audience, the ones who grew up thinking the theatre was stuffy and dull...Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens looks likely to chalk up another success with this audience.”
Veronica Lee, Sunday Times, 22/03/98
“A wonderful evening...
I can't wait to see it again.”
Neil Young, Entertainment News
“A huge great big hit!”
GLR 94.9 FM
“Dreams come true, love changes everything and the transvestite Booby who wants to be a Space Vixen has her day”
Michael Coveny, The Daily Mail - 26/03/98
“If you're a fan of camper-than-camp musicals, you'll be hard pushed to beat Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens. Stiletto murders, innuendo galore, and catchy nonsensical tunes make it an extremely colourful and fun night out!”
London Scene Out, 14/04/98
“Imagine an episode of Blakes Seven scripted by Danny La Rue with some Eurovision songs thrown in...”
“A haven for hedonistic disco-bunnies”
Nick Curtis, Evening Standard - 27/03/98
“It's set to become the cult of the next millenium.”
Chris Jarvis, BBC TV
“Absolutely fantastic! A great night out! I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Good music, flashy sets and superb performances from the cast made it an unforgettable evening.”
Graham Rogers, 210FM
Red Dwarf meets The Rocky Horror Show in this whacky, tacky dollop of theatrical bubblegum, which manages to squeeze a futuristic disco whodunit, four rather sweet love stories (two straight, one gay and one lesian) and a camp homage to the joys of PVC against bare skin into two hours of kitsch romping on stage.”
Picture a glittering set that looks like the inside of a gigantic, bombed-out Wonderbra, with a rock band in the right cup, and a cocktail bar in the left, and then imagine a scene in which a voluptuous corpse in bondage lederhosen gets up and does a tap dance before ascending into heaven on angel wings, and you will get the general idea. With a cast that makes up in energy what it occasionally lacks in grace, and an innocence that shines through all the double entendres, this is seedy, sparkling fun"
Michael Wright, The Sunday Times - 29/03/98
“The kind of show that the audience would put on if they were putting on shows.”
Paul Gambuccini, Kaleidoscope, BBC Radio 4
“Camp-kitsch musical in which the glitter-booted, crime-fighting Space Vixens investigate a series of stiletto murders on the seedy planet Frottage III. This 1995 Edinburgh Festival cult hit is now in town with 14 songs and several tons of sequins!”
Time Out 18/03/98
“A feel good spectacular”
“They've arrived! Two and a half years after wowing audiences and critics alike on the Edinburgh Fringe, Charlotte Mann's glam intergalactic crime busters extraordinaire dock gamely into the West End...
“This gloriously constructed sci-fi dive is home to the likes of wannabe Space Vixen, drag diva Booby Shevalle, waiting tables in her yellow gingham pinnie, and of course Saucy Jack himself, a chain-mailed cabaret artiste manqué. With a giant video intro and blinding funky lighting enshrining a mirror ball, all the equipment is in place for a wild and whacky night of plasticky razzmatazz!”
“As Saucy Jack, David Schofield is in complete control, delivering a kind of twisted pastiche of Peter Stringfellow… Highlights are provided by the supporting roles, especially David Ashley's sweet turn as Booby, Hannah Waddingham's mighty Chesty Prospects, Daniel Wexler's break on sax as Sammy, next on the killer's list of club performers, and Mark Oxtoby's camped-up strip show, Fetish Number From Nowhere.”
Charles Godfrey-Faussett, Time Out 01/04/98
“The most fun show in town!”
“Anyone uninterested in a little lurex, a little love and pinch of PVC should avoid this fabulous extravaganza of disco, kitsch and camp!”
“This musical, to its credit, has aspirations to a serious theme… in revealing the ultimate importance of being yourself, not being ashamed of your love of disco music, and wearing plastic and lurex whenever it takes your fancy. Fetishists have rights too.”
Alister Lownie, ROAR 27/3/98
“Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens is great fun. It's very camp, very glam, and the music's great, which is not always the case with musicals to be honest. The script is a simple and slightly daft whodunit set in a seedy bar on the planet Frottage III, where somebody gets murdered with a stiletto shoe. You're not getting the X Files, I can tell you that.”
“All I can guarantee is that afterwards you will definitely come out singing 'Glitter boots saved my life' and the theme tune, which is 'All I need is Disco'. Don't say I didn't warn you.”
Alan Davies – Hot tickets 19-03-98
“A cult-in-the-making dream come true!”
Time Out - 01/04/98
“Tuned in, spaced out and there to save the universe”
Anyone who thinks camp is somewhere boy scouts pitch tents and sing "Ging Gang Gooly Gooly" round the fire should probably give the new West End musical, Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens, a miss. Otherwise they might be taken aback by the sight of a troupe of performers in glittery bondage gear high-kicking their way down a flight of steps while singing "All I Need is Disco". Did anyone say "cult"? A shorthand description of Saucy Jack might be: a musical Carry On Blake's Seven.”
“But the show is stuffed with enough other kitsch references to give a media student wet dreams: Russ Meyer, This is Spinal Tap, Star Wars, Red Dwarf, Dr. Who, Mad Max, Charlie's Angels, Return to the Forbidden Planet, The Wizard of Oz, and virtually any other camp classic you care to mention. After two sell-out seasons in Edinburgh before the West End, Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens was dubbed by the late Jack Tinker in the Daily Mail, "the Rocky Horror Show for the millennium". With audiences coming back again and again dressed as their favourite characters (they seem to have a penchant for bubble-wrap), booing and hissing the baddie in time-honoured panto fashion and dancing in the aisles to the big show-tunes – as they were when I saw the show at the Hackney Empire – who would argue with that comparison?”
“Mike Fidler reveals the profundity of the inspiration behind Saucy Jack: “I had just seen a musical in Edinburgh called 'Ilse, Queen of the Nazi Love Camp'. It made me think that the first thing you need is a good title, and sometimes that's all you need. This title came from the moment in the film This is Spinal Tap when the members of the prog-rock band are thinking up titles for a proposed musical about Jack the Ripper. “I wrote the pitch before we wrote the show” Fidler recalls: “Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens – the musical Spinal Tap never wrote. A Girl Power backlash against Russ Meyer!”
A cult following is all very well, but the evangelical Fidler is eager for Saucy Jack to reach a wider audience. With a glint in his eye, he envisages being beamed up to mainstream, merchandising heaven. ”I'd love to do Space Vixen outfits for Barbie, or a silver baseball jacket that says "Space Vixen" on the back. I've just seen a Nelson Mandela fridge magnet. Why couldn't we have a Jubilee Climax fridge magnet?"
“Brave words. But for all that, can Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens really work in the West End, even in a theatre as deliciously named as The Queen's? Is Shaftesbury Avenue ready for hordes of bubble-wrap and glitter-boot-clad revellers? There will inevitably be those who deride the show's naivety, but if pure, unadulterated hedonism - to say nothing of serious rubber wear - is your bag, then you've come to the right place. Better get down to Sainsburys to stock up on bubble-wrap.”
James Rampton, The Independent 23/03/98
“A camp, glam rock extravaganza...”
“The Space Vixens are ball busting, crime busters in glitter boots who make the Spice Girls look like a bunch of cissies and bring a new meaning to the girl power.”
Tony Purnell, Mirror 9/04/98
“This is the most purely enjoyable and outrageous feast of camp since The Rocky Horror Show”
London Midweek, 23/03/98
“It's one of those dream stories beloved of the theatre. A group of university students got together and wrote a musical for the Edinburgh Festival. Three years later it landed in the West End. They said they wanted to produce a glam-rock musical which was fun, outrageous and camp. They certainly have!”
Peter Stenson, Musical Stages, Summer 1998
"Spandex, sequins and an all-round feast of high camp and interplanetary decadence!”
The Scotsman 2/8/99
“Be warned- not for prudes. But it's cosmic!”
“Thank God the 70s gave us disco. Without it, the Space Vixens wouldn't be saving the universe from the Sling Back Killer who stalks the entertainers in Saucy Jack's establishment. In a swathe of glitter and illicit plastic substances, the cast strut, dance, sing, raunch and groove their way through a show that is out of this world.”
Three Weeks 19/8/99
“Intergalactic extravaganza”
“Originally written and produced by a group of university students on a shoestring budget, this intergalactic extravaganza won a Fringe First in 1995 and has not looked back since. Set in a sleazy bar on a distant planet, the audience become the clientele, served up with an array of cosmic cocktails. But trouble looms, and only the Space Vixens can save the day by the Power of Disco.”
Metro Edinburgh Festival Guide 1999
“no sex please - you're the audience”
Daily Record 16/8/99
“A legendary Fringe success story!”
“The show has a seductive charm which finally proves irresistible and the songs are uplifting and infectious. Great fun!”
Andrew Burnet - The Scotsman 09/08/99
“COUPLE TAKE AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION TOO FAR”
“The cast of one of Edinburgh's raunchiest shows were upstaged by two members of the audience who decided to put on an undesirable performance of their own... Stewards intervened as people complained about the amorous pair. One man said, "The couple were so caught up in the excitement of the show, they looked as if they were about to have sex right there and then.” Pleasance deputy director Louise Chantal said Most people wait until they get home for such frolics and that is how we would like to keep it, but we are pleased they seem to have enjoyed the show.”
Glasgow Herald 16/08/99
“ON THE FRINGE OF BAD TASTE”
“One of Edinburgh's raunchiest shows!”
James Tait Daily Mirror 16/8/99
“A sizzling production!”
The Sun – 16/08/99
“Despite the title, the jokes about latex and inclusion of a rather politically-correct lesbian relation, it's all good clean fun in the way that musicals always seem to be. The Show has been doing very well in London, so this is an excellent chance to catch it in the intimate environment of the Pleasance.”
Edinburgh Fringe Guide – August 1999
“Finding somewhere warm and dark when the mood takes you in a city as cold and Calvinistic as Edinburgh is never easy. So staff at The Pleasance tried to be laid-back when a couple attempted to have sex in the second row of Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens. After complaints however, they are now determined to draw the line. ”We are thinking of having an announcement before the show,” a spokesperson told us. ”Something along the lines of, 'Would patrons please keep their knickers on until the end of the performance?' Although we think that might be too subtle.”
The Guardian 17/08/99
“This is a contender for the best Fringe fairytale ever.”
“In 1995, director Michael Fidler discovered that due to a cancellation there was a vacancy for a musical in the Fringe programme. To meet the print deadline, he came up with a title and a blurb overnight. In the ensuing ten weeks he put together a show that went on to win a Fringe First and transfer to the West End to the sound of critical fanfares and deafening applause.”
“A show that came about by chance and cheek has run and run. ”We open at a permanent venue in London in September: our own futuristic cabaret bar", says Fidler. ”Before that, we wanted to bring it back for that raw Fringe experience one more time.”
“That’s raw in the sense of an interactive, all-singing, all-dancing disco spectacular with a history as colourful as its space-age setting. And cocktails on tap!”
Hannah McGill The List - 05/08/99
“Saucier than a direct hit on a Heinz factory”
“The type of disco tunes you can’t help remembering the next day or the next week..”
“The audience to the Saucy Jack experiment are invited to sit at tables and be served by its colourful inhabitants, but beware, there’s a serial killer at large and hot on his trail are the Space Vixens.”
“Martyn Brooks, who plays Saucy Jack said, “I think they’ve now put it in its most original format. They’ve given it its own venue: a really seedy cabaret bar on the South Bank. You have the urge to get up get involved - some people even strip when the characters strip. It’s not like “proper” theatre. You don’t just sit and watch. You are part of it. It’s good because we’re providing a service to the extremes of our social society. You get kinkified people showing up right across to the people who would generally rather be at home watching Star Trek or Babylon 5.”
“It’s good for everyone because you have love, hate, death, buttocks… What I really like though is that it is set up as a real bar. People get their drinks; they’re constantly getting up to have a piss while we’re doing our stuff. We can involve them. Or I can just stop and watch them. We’ve knocked drinks over people and stopped the show to get them cleaned up and a fresh drink, or alternatively I could just go and start licking your girlfriend’s face.”
“If you’ve got anything kinky and glittery put it on for a visit to Saucy Jack’s Cabaret Bar!”
LAM 16/11/99
“OH, YOU ARE SAUCY!”
“After a successful stint at the Edinburgh Fringe, Saucy Jack has opened a Cabaret Bar on the South Bank and theatre-goers are gagging for it. Set in an intergalactic bar, the audience is served cocktails by the space-age inhabitants, while a pumping disco beat provides the soundtrack for a cast of leather-clad guys and chicks to strut their cosmic stuff.”
“It’s incredibly sexy!”
“There isn’t a dry pair of knickers in the house.”
“So dig out your old spangly boob tube and silver platform boots from the Seventies (the girls can dress up too), get down to Saucy Jack’s and have the time of your life!”
Kilburn Times 25/11/99
“Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens has been lauded as “The Rocky Horror Show for the Millennium”, it has won awards, sold out at the Edinburgh Fringe and has even amassed a devoted following who dress as the stars and know all the words.”
“Martyn Brooks excels as insane master of ceremonies, Saucy Jack.”
“The show’s finale involves the audience jumping to their feet to dance along with the cast.”
“Hen nights, half-cut office workers and gaggling students hunch over tables, glugging down Red Bull and vodka to a succession of alternative cabaret – piercers, sword-swallowers, a camp glitzy chanteuse, all introduced by Saucy Jack, a six-foot northerner with black lipstick and ankle-length leather SS coat. It’s like Butlins on rubber.”
“If you love retro nights, and fancy yourself as, erm, “saucy”, you could do far worse than dressing up and dragging the office down to Saucy Jack’s.”
Mercury 25/11/99
“Brilliantly funny”
Axiom News 29/11/99
“A smash hit at the Edinburgh Fringe and deemed as “The Rocky Horror Show for the Millennium” by the Daily Mail, stage show Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens brings a special cabaret night-club experience to London. Saucy Jack’s Cabaret Bar, every Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings at Crucifix Lane is set in a space-age intergalactic bar on a distant planet. Doors open at 7.00pm with cabaret, show and dancing until 2.00am.”
Footloose in London 17/11/99
“Roll out the bubble wrap, a new club has opened.”
“Deep in the confines of London Bridge’s maelstrom of arches lies a new addition to the cultural drinking map in the guise of Saucy Jack’s Cabaret Bar. Saucy Jack is the host and a barnful of smarm could not accommodate his blaring ego – there is certainly no avoiding him once you are in the door.”
“This is a production that you simply immerse yourself in, resistance is unavoidable as the entire space is used for theatrical effect and you, the audience, are guests at Jack’s bar. Booby Shevalle, Jack’s wannabe dragster waitress drfits in and out of the tables, occasionally managing a bit of service in between bouts of space dreaming. Once she and Sammy Sax launch into All I Need is Disco, even the hippest Soho media mauler would be hard pressed to suppress a foot tapping smile.”
Alison Swann QX International 15/12/99
“Unrequited love, murder and a lot of hot sax.”
“The atmosphere is electric and the attitude aimed at pure Friday night fun.”
“The show already has a cult following. Fans wrapped in bubble wrap mime the words as the simulate in Steps-style the catchy dance moves. At the end the DJ spins out some great 80s classics and the cast come out to mingle dressed as angels. Bizarre? You bet and it could only be at Saucy Jack’s.”
Jay Bowers – South London Press 26/11/99
“The hit West End show Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens has now become a cabaret nightclub experience like nothing on earth. Saucy Jack’s Cabaret Bar is a space-aged, intergalactic bar on a distant planet where you can see the best in extra-terrestrial entertainment...”
Axiom news 18/11/99
“A WEIRD WORLD OF CABARET”
“A glittering new nightclub experience like nothing else on earth!”
Southern Cross 17/11/99
“Now in a sleazily atmospheric nightclub under some South London railway arches, Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens comes to entertaining life.”
“Saucy Jack’s is a cabaret bar on outer space’s degenerate planet Frottage III, where a sling back killer is picking off its artists one by one. On the strength of the pre-show cabaret my sympathies were with the killer but when the show itself kicked in it became rather more original.”
“Director Johanna Allitt, credited for her original ideas and playing Bunny/Vulva is the resourceful talent who holds it together. Her environmental staging, which has the action set across the whole club, is a definite plus in maintaining the vitality. So is the wonderful Hannah Waddingham as one of the Space Vixens.”
Mark Shenton – The Stage 29/12/01
“All-sizzling, all-dancing.”
“What matters here is the glitz and glamour, and Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens has it in spades.”
What’s Hot 14/08/02
“Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins last night injected some glamour into the anarchic Edinburgh Fringe Festival… They were in the audience of the innuendo laden musical, Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens, described as a cross between the Carry On films and the Rocky Horror Picture Show, in which a young Ms. Sarandon starred.”
Angelique Chrisafis – The Guardian 15/12/02
“SPACE: THE FINAL FROLICKING FRONTIER”
“Saucy Jack runs a raunchy roadhouse in outer space that operates in a Hotel California style: “You can check out any time you like but you can never leave.” Those who think they are going to leave find they are checked out with a stiletto heel through their chest. So in come the Space Vixens, all big hair, glitter boots, and rubber suits to find the killer and save the day with the help of the Power of Disco.”
“It was a cold, sodden, rainy night when I went to see this sexy romp of a musical, but there was a slight party atmosphere brewing even before it began. Many fans had returned for a second helping. They’re easy to pick out as they slap sparkly eye shadow on with a trowel and know all the words and moves. Still it took a while for the performers to bring the rest of us soggy creatures up to Saturday Night Fever Pitch, but we were clapping away and dancing on stage with them to All I Need is Disco at the end.”
“Scott Baker is superb as Saucy Jack and Espen Elliot’s coming out number as Mitch Maypole really brought the house down. So if you’re looking for a good time: Come, kick back, relax...at Saucy Jack’s.”
Paul Rhodes - The Scotsman - 14/08/02
“JACK IS BACK!”
“The revolutionary cult musical, Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens, returns in all its glitter and dazzle.”
“The script is unique for its light-hearted funny quips, high-energy music and serious undertones. It begins when a serial killer is at large until the Space Vixens, super-fashion intergalactic crime-fighters, arrive to save the day by the Power of Disco. The trio travel around the galaxy, crime fighting with a seductive twist in their platform booted stride.”
“An explosion of energy!”
“High energy, disco and funk...”
“The show adds to its uniqueness by encouraging the audience to get involved with the party.”
“I didn’t want it to be a sit still in the dark and behave yourself night, more standing up on the table, joining in and dancing,” says Johanna Allitt, one of the show’s creators.”
“Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens isn’t just a musical; it’s a great night out. There is a pre-show cabaret and a post-show disco every night, and although it has been a massive hit with gay guys, for once it hasn’t forgotten that gay girlies can be just as good at camping it up!”
G3 Nov 03
“One part glitter boot glamour pusses and one part disco devotees, these sirens of the spaceways fight crime through the known universe – though, as they wade through a bloody trail of brutal death and butchered dreams as part of their investigation, each of the three Space Vixens finds love in the arms of the unlikeliest people.”
“This latest production at the Albany has been masterminded by the show’s original creative teams and features many of the same cast members seen in the 1995 premiere. Director Michael Fidler has mounted a lavish production and plays every scene for its high camp value; the actors play everything to the hilt and win the audience over in the process. Meanwhile, Musical Director James Compton has done a commendable job of remixing the original electronic score, which blends disco, house and glam rock with archetypal showtunes”.
“With a pre-show cabaret and a late disco afterwards this is not an evening of improving culture. It’s a raunchy and outrageous feel good musical with its fair share of hummable tunes.”
Jaspre Bark - Whats On 5/11/03
“The London cabaret scene is about to burst from its underground lair, with an emphasis on all-round entertainment, glitz, glamour and fun.”
“Life is a cabaret old chum, so come to the cabaret” warbles Liza Minelli at any given opportunity. Whilst she turns slowly gaga, a vibrant new take on old vaudeville is rocking in. You may have noticed nightclubs have been providing mini-casinos recently. You may have been to Glastonbury and discovered the sumptuous luxury of the Lost Vagueness field, or you might be aware of a sweaty dive called Saucy Jack’s, where half the clientele are murdered every night and you can sing songs and dance with them right before they snuff it.”
“Johanna Allitt, co-creator and star of Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens feels similarly about the barriers put up between audience and performer in most entertainment forms, from theatre to bands and DJs. Described as this century’s Rocky Horror Picture Show, Saucy Jack’s is an actual bar, where the audience seats itself in and around the action, and is free to join in as it wishes. The idea was conceived to provide all-round entertainment including cabaret acts, DJs, dancing, food, drink and drama, and has already gained much cult status.”
“This seems to be a movement that is gaining broad appeal, perhaps because of its accessibility and anti-cool, cool demeanour.”
Emily Pacey – Creative Week 29/09/03
“CRITIC’S CHOICE –
OPENING NEXT WEEK…”
“Few Christmas offerings will out-camp this disco panto, set on the planet Frottage III, where the cabaret artistes of Saucy Jack’s bar are being liquidated by the venomous Sling Back Killer. Will heroine Jubilee Climax (Faye Tozer late of Steps) save the day? "You bet your sequinned thong.”
Richard Godwin – Evening Standard 1/12/05
“The intergalactic musical sensation shimmers back into view at The Venue, Leicester Square, for a festive run.”
“Murder, disco, glamour and glitz combined with a funky original score.”
What’s On 23/11/05
“SET TO STUN”
The Stage 1/12/05
“Treat yourself to science fiction on stage this Christmas with Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens. The new show stars pop diva Faye Tozer (of Steps fame) making her West End debut playing Space Vixen, Jubilee Climax. The new cosmic choreography is supplied by the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing panellist, Bruno Tonioli…”
“It’s great, great fun. It’s the kind of show you can have your drinks at your table. I call it a grown up pantomime.”
“With the performance taking place all around the auditorium, it is presenting challenges he is not used to dealing with when working on television. ‘It is a different technique. When you work on film it is very much of the moment. You are working with a camera’s eye but when you are working in the theatre it is like working on wide all the time and you have to be aware that everything is seen from a different perspective and everybody is watching everybody else.’ He says.”
“When I read the script it really made me laugh and it tickled my sense of humour because it is quite rude and very unpretentious in a way. I thought this is something that is very amusing and I love the characters.”
“It also gives him the chance to introduce comedy into his dance routines – something of a mission for the man. ‘I love comedy. I think there is a lot of space for comedy and I think we can actually get a laugh with dance. A lot of choreographers take themselves very seriously and I think dance should be fun.’ He says.”
Jeremy Austin – The Stage 15/12/05
“An ecstatic night of wild hilarity.”
“Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens was first performed ten years ago at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival where it was an instant success. The show’s development led, via a successful West End season at the Queen’s Theatre, to a home in a club under the arches at London Bridge where for two years a galaxy of theatre-goers popped on plastic, grabbed their glitter boots and slapped on the sequins – creating a cult classic.”
Sandy Auden – Alien online 22/12/05
“A SHIMMERING SF SPECTACULAR”
“It’s like a cross between Blake’s Seven and the Playboy Channel.”
“We often appraise plays for children, families and coach parties. Now comes a show designed for Club 18-30 types and blokes who read those magazines called Zoo or Nuts or Grope or whatever...”
“It’s an ironic disco musical obsessed with sex.”
Daily Mail 9/12/05
“THE SAUCY PRINCE AND HIS VIXEN SISTERS GO WILD”
“Prince Abdul Azim, the Sultan of Brunei’s 23 year old son, likes to go to London’s ritziest events, but is he making himself unpopular? At the first night of the futuristic musical Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens at The Venue in Leicester Square, the Prince and his sisters were so rowdy they were thrown out by the management. “I had no idea who they were at the time, but they were behaving like five year olds” said the venue manager. “Running around the foyer screaming and taking flash photographs during the musical. In the interval I suggested it might be best for them not to return for the second half and they left in a huff. It just shows that money can’t buy you manners.”
Evening Standard Magazine 22/12/05
“Global warming. World famine. Bird flu pandemic. Ah, bollocks! Cure the lot with the power of disco and glitter boots at Saucy Jack’s.”
“Unashamedly fun and major league camp”
“Faye Tozer (she of Steps fame) clearly doesn’t take herself too seriously – and she can’t half sing. And as for Jack – well he fairly belts out his numbers, each note slap bang on the money – although how he’s going to keep it up for the full run is anybody’s guess.”
“The extraordinary array of talented performers appearing in this exhuberant cabaret knocks the crap out of Pop Factor / X Idol type programmes.”
“Ok, so if you’re a fully paid up grown-up, this may not be for you. But if you liked Jerry Springer the Opera, couldn’t understand the critics’ problems with Ducktastic and at least know where “Damn it, Janet” comes from, you could do worse than get your glitter balls out at Jack’s.”
Chris Parkinson - London at Large 13/12/05
“PITCHING CAMP IN OUTER SPACE”
“At a certain point you just have to give in gracefully to the onslaught of glitz camp and sheer kitsch spectacular that is this cult musical and start clapping along.”
“For me, surrender time was when the trio of eponymous foxy ladies, a sort of intergalactic Charlie’s Angels, informed us in song of how “Glitter Boots Saved My Life” and started brandishing their preferred weapons, jewel-encrusted hairdryers.”
The stiletto of suspicion points firmly at the jealous Jack himself, but getting bogged down in administrative details is decidedly not the point of this evening. Not when there are silver thigh-length boots to wear, outrageous hair extensions to twirl and more glitter than a Christmas card convention.
“For the whole thing is nothing more or less than a celebration of the delightful tackiness of disco music: even the Space Vixens themselves have sworn a solemn oath to live or die by its power. Director Michael Fidler and choreographer Bruno Tonioli, the Strictly Come Dancing judge, take the soundtrack no less seriously than their leading ladies, which results in some wonderfully natty routines around the auditorium’s cabaret-style tables.”
“I defy anyone not to come away singing the Space Vixen anthem while windmilling their arms in the appropriate girl-power gestures.”
Fiona Mountford – The Standard 13/12/05
“CRITICS CHOICE”
“Faye Tozer, late of Steps, impresses as the feisty Jubilee Climax as she gives Scott Baker’s Ziggy Stardust lookalike, Jack, the runaround and writhes enticingly up and down a pole that is just made for dancing.”
“Perfect for the party silly season.”
Nicholas de Jongh - Evening Standard 15/12/05
“Crammed with sequins.”
“A really fun show with some great laugh out loud moments… In the name of disco and all things glittery I command you to see this show. May the funk be with you”
Sarah Monaghan - Theatreworld 8/12/05
“Boisterous, salacious, Sci-fi musical”
Whats on in London 02/02/06
“Modern musicals generally fall into three holes. There are those that wish they’d been written by Stephen Sondheim, those that wish they’d been written in the 80’s, and those that wish they were The Rocky Horror Show. You’ll find four thousand or so in that last category at the Edinburgh Fringe each year, but only the occasional one will crack London.”
“Such a one is Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens, back for its second stay in the West End in under a decade. Such success isn’t undeserved, for this is more like Rocky Horror than most imitators. It has two great numbers, and several other rockers that a cult fanatic could learn to love.”
“The surprisingly good Faye Tozer (from Steps) proves you don’t need to be a genuine star to have some genuine star quality.”
Kieron Quirke – Time Out 14/12/05
“TAKING ON THE CYBERNAUGHTIES”
Time Out 30/11/05
“STAR TREK MEETS YMCA ON LSD”
“A mesmerising medley of non-stop disco-dance camp.”
“This is pure, high-octane, all-fired-up camp dross. But what a gas!”
“Space Vixens Jubilee climax, Bunny Lingus and Anna Labia come to the rescue – in glitter boots. There’s something for everyone: swingers young and old; YMCA leather boys in love with plastic panties; tongue-mingling daughters of Sappho; transvestite waitresses dreaming of joining the Space Vixen Corps.”
“Only a stellar cast and a visually and musically incisive direction could have pulled off this space travesty. But they did and they do in this super slick, intoxicating production that peerlessly parodies everything from Charlie’s Angels and Gone with the Wind to Star Wars.”
“Michael Fidler’s ensemble are truly off the planet, most notably Scott Baker as impresario from hell Saucy Jack and Mark Carroll as wacky Dr. von Whackoff. Beam me up, Saucy!”
“Think Star Trek meets The Entertainer on overload in a space- time warp that guzzles fetish freakery like anti-matter was going out of fashion.”
Martina Anzinger - West End Extra 16/12/05
“This musical blend of the polymorphous perversity of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the rock’n’roll sci-fi of Return to the Forbidden Planet and the disco of, er disco has always worked best in the clubbier venues; the last time it played the West End, at the Queen’s Theatre in 1998, you could feel the industrious effort pour off the stage in waves, like the dry ice it periodically deployed.”
“In contrast, the converted church crypt off Leicester Square that is The Venue has a zone of table seating round which the performers can prowl while we cowards skulk in the ranks of seats further back. Director Michael Fidler uses the whole space well, even daring to leave the corpse of Chesty Prospects, stabbed through the heart with a sequinned sling back in the middle of the auditorium at the interval before bringing her off in the second act.”
“That gives a fair idea of the plot: camp serial killer in intergalactic clip-joint, patrolled by lame-wearing amazons; love, death, showbiz and bubble-wrap fetish. It is obviously an attempt to write a successor to Richard O’Brien’s “don’t dream it, be it” sensation, and thus sets itself high standards. This time out, it damned near meets them.”
“As head Vixen Jubilee Climax, Faye Tozer knows exactly the kind of campery to provide while ably belting out her numbers: her stint in the manufactured pop group Steps trained her in showmanship rather than dramtic subtlety, just as the show requires. The decision to use a pre-recorded score has its benefits in big-blast numbers such as Glitter Boots Saved My Life and Jubilee’s big power ballad Living in Hell but the show would gain from having at least a core band playing live.”
“Despite this and its derivativeness, I found myself surprisingly seduced.”
Ian Shuttleworth – Financial Time 15/12/05
“JUMPIN’ JACK’S BASH”
“FAYE’S NEW SHOW IS A BOOZY HIT!”
“Every night
is one big party!”
“A raunchy musical where the audience is encouraged to booze while they watch has taken show business by storm. The hot show – Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens – is drawing in crowds who would never normally go near a theatre. And the disco-style musical, which stars sexy former Steps singer Faye Tozer, is proving a huge hit among London’s party lovers and clubbers.”
Susan Hill – The Daily Star 22/01/06
“A vestige of Weimar, a trickle of tango and dollops of disco…”
Sam Marlowe The Times – 02/01/06
“SPACE VIXENS AND GLITTER BOOTS SAVE THE DAY”
“Clearly aimed at a generation too young to have experienced The Rocky Horror Show but in urgent need of an injection of leather, cross-dressing campery and glam rock, Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens is hardly theatrical rocket science, but neither is it a show that you could possibly dislike. It is just too energetic, too aware of its own absurdity – and it has the added benefit of a song called Glitter Boots Saved My Life.”
“The piece started out life in Edinburgh in the 1990s and has already made a brief West End appearance. The key to its success here is that the cabaret-style Venue is absolutely the right place to stage this sort of silly, tongue-in-cheek hokum. The audience can’t but help feel part of the show, and some of the funniest moments come from the ineractions between the crowd and the cast.”
“The choreography of Strictly Come Dancing judge Bruno Tonioli comes into its own with a terrific male pole-dancing extravaganza performed in tiny shorts that epitomises a show that is good clean dirty fun, and wouldn’t really shock your mum.”
“No, it’s not Ibsen, and it’s definitely not Sondheim. But the show struts its stuff so blatantly that it’s impossible not to be entertained by its energy and brazen vulgarity.”
Lyn Gardner - The Guardian 14/01/06
“The actors appears smitten with the material and the crowd went along for the ride. Love, honor and truth rose with every hip thurst; regret, despair and betrayel fell with every twirl.”
“A bar friendly musical with a lot of verve”
Anchorage Daily News 13/10/2007
“Fast, furious and rather risque”
Watford Chronicle 2/11/2007
“Saucy Jack will fulfil your deepest, sauciest wishes.”
“Space Camp with a disco beat!”
“What the beach-bar musical ‘Mama Mia’ should have been.”
“A new world of cosmic campiness - as if Studio 54 had been shot into space then crash-landed into the alien slum Frottage III, where the atmosphere is ‘dripping with vice’. Now its a seedy watering hole for the wayfaring Ziggy Stardusts.”
“A colorful, exciting, sexy, cosmic experience!”
Christopher Blink - Memphis Gazette 10/03/2007
“The cult musical which has played London's West End, Edinburgh Festival and now all over the work was great fun, camp and unashamedly silly!”
County Times 27/02/2009
Best show on London Fringe
and utterly bonkers!”
