Pop Off, Michelangelo! review – the Renaissance retold with high-camp modernity

Underbelly Boulevard, London
Dylan MarcAurele’s musical comedy couldn’t be trashier but there’s fun to be had mixing twerking with 1400s Tuscany

The Pope vapes, Michelangelo uses Zoom, and Leonardo da Vinci foretells the career of Marisa Tomei. This is not the Renaissance as the textbooks teach it. Dylan MarcAurele’s musical comedy mashes up Medici Florence and high-camp modernity to trace two friends’ journey from gay schoolmates (bit of a historical stretch, that) to the greatest artists of their age. It couldn’t be trashier but in the spaces between art history and anachronism, flamboyant rudeness and lyrical wit, there’s fun to be had.

No point pretending Pop Off, Michelangelo! takes much interest in these Old Masters’ art, nor in the era. But it’s all over their queerness – atoning for which drives Michelangelo to dump his BFF and seek Sistine Chapel salvation. But can they swerve the attentions of religious firebrand Savonarola, in an age turning increasingly cynical thanks to pizza chef and aspiring philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli?