Viva Forever!, Piccadilly Theatre, review The Girls arrived like a blast of fresh air in John Major's drab Britain in the Nineties, and though their songs were often formulaic, many had a youthful energy and bounce. The best of them - Wannabe, 2 Become 1, Who Do You Think You Are? - are irresistible to anyone with a taste for candy-coated popular music. But there was a good deal of dross, too, and we get an awful lot of it here. But what really scuppers the show - and it is nearly always the case with dud musicals - is the book. Jennifer Saunders's script is almost insultingly banal as she tells the story of a group of lippy teenagers with more than a passing resemblance to the Spice Girls attempting to achieve fame on an X-factor-style talent show. The supposedly satirical depiction of the judges - a Simon Cowell-like bully and a middle-aged termagant à la Sharon Osbourne - is as crude as it is predictable and entirely lacks bite. It is also hard to warm to the show's heroine, Viva (the sweet-voiced but bland Hannah John-Kamen), who, when offered the chance to go solo, dumps her friends to become a star and "live the dream." It's hard to care, though, because Saunders has failed or forgotten to characterise the other three members of the group. Never mind girl power, these are girl ciphers. A more rigorous writer might also have tackled the question of why Viva, adopted as a baby by a shambolic good-hearted lush who lives on a houseboat, is so incurious about discovering the identity of her real mother. But then the show is full of unexplored possibilities and loose ends. It's sad to see that fine actress Sally Dexter playing the queen bitch on the talent show, a one-dimensional role that finally becomes bogged down in a mire of lachrymose sentimentality. Sally Ann Triplett has a couple of touching moments as the adoptive mother and makes the most of the one song that is staged with a hint of wit, 2 Become 1, in which she rekindles an old romance. But this is a fatuous show with nothing fresh to say about popular culture and our fixation with fame. If you love the Spice Girls stay at home and listen to their greatest hits. Tickets: 0844 412 6666; vivaforeverthemusical.com