Close-Up: The Twiggy Musical review: A Sixties icon gets a garishly appealingly jukebox tribute

Ben Elton’s show at the Menier Chocolate Factory is as unsubtle as a Pucci print mini dress , but Elena Skye shines as the golden supermodel of the Sixties

Elena Skye as Twiggy in ‘Close-Up: The Twiggy Musical’ (Manuel Harlan)

Twiggy’s life story might seem like a slender, unlikely thing to hang a whole musical on. The ubiquitous, big-lashed modelling pics in the Sixties, the smattering of film roles in the Seventies, that M&S fashion line in the 2010s... it’s not exactly narrative gold. But over dinner with her good mate Ben Elton (writer of Blackadder and We Will Rock You), the pair cooked up the idea for this show, and it’s an unexpected if deeply unsubtle treat: a hit-stuffed homage to a working-class girl who rose to impossible-seeming heights.

The whole musical is narrated by Twiggy herself, as played by Elena Skye – who both looks the part and boasts a gutsy voice that’s perfect for songs by 60s sirens like Lesley Gore and Petula Clark. It’s the kind of approach you’d associate more with an embattled one-woman fringe show than a high-budget musical but it just about works here. Skye’s down-to-earth, Neasden-accented narration punctures the glamour of swinging London, whipped up here by Jonathan Lipman’s lavish, catwalk-worthy costume design and Jacob Fearey’s kitschy choreography.

“I was called androgynous – that’s posh for no tits,” she tells us self-deprecatingly, as she lands a fashion career at the age of 15 by posing in the gamine, swirly-patterned minidresses she runs up on her sewing machine. But first, she picks up a creepy older boyfriend-turned-manager: 25-year-old Justin de Villeneuve (Matt Corner), a pretentious chancer who collects her from grammar school in his fancy motor. It’s a storyline that’s especially hard to style out after the Russell Brand allegations earlier this month, but Elton tries his darndest. In a blindingly crass scene, her parents sing the schmaltzy hit “Take Good Care of My Baby” to her older lover, the irony as pungent as a matinee idol’s aftershave. “It was the Sixties, sexy schoolgirls were all part of the culture,” opines Twiggy, explaining that it only seems wrong in retrospect.