They’ll never let you down. They think you’re so beautiful, girl. They don’t want you to kill yourself — you’re so sexy, haha!
Such is the messaging of OnTheNose Productions’ fantastically crafted boy band MAN!FEST (a moment for the triple entendre name, please). MAN!FEST consists of an all-female line up in male popstar drag — lots of contouring and hair swept under caps and overlined eyebrows. In-universe, MAN!FEST are a world-famous manufactured boy band, adored by teenage girls far and wide for all the reasons boy bands are usually adored by teenage girls far and wide: they’re hot! There’s a member for everyone’s sexual preferences! They sing some absolute bangers!
However, the boys are having issues. Unfolding over an hour of clever, silly, and impressively sophisticated comedy, the members each wrestle with the many pressures of both being in the public eye and being a man. These characters are all so well-crafted and so believable: we have Emily Benucci as Ruben (virginal, prone to misogynistic radicalisation, think Neil from The Inbetweeners if managed by SYCO); Hollie Jameson-Clarke as Ash (bad boy, long hair, think enlightened Howard from Take That), Esther Dracott as Ewan (leader, ‘poet’, think greasier Harry Styles), and Maddie Bell as Cody (six-pack, dancer, think JLS — general).
Each cast member gets many a moment to shine, and all of them are exceptional comedic performers. Their physicality is genuinely insane. They all have that specific swagger of X-Factor graduates down to a complete T; blur your eyes slightly and One Direction circa 2010 are IN THE ROOM. The music is also impressively real-sounding: a stand-out song is performed by Hollie Jameson-Clarke as Ash, as he ruminates on the restrictive nature of being a ‘bad boy’. It’s genuinely emotive, and puts you in mind of a heart-wrenching Oscar-winning musical solo more so than a drag boy band musical comedy.
MAN!FEST is overall a very, very funny show (there’s a fantastic exchange about women’s ability to orgasm…), but it’s occasionally also very, very serious. The writers manage to cover a remarkable amount of ground in just one hour — toxic masculinity, eating disorders, teen suicide, repressed homosexuality — whilst maintaining a firmly comic tone throughout.
To do something really embarrassing and reference Bo Burnham in 2026, MAN!FEST has strong parallels to ‘Repeat Stuff’: a song about how malicious marketing managers exploit both their clients and their teen girl market by profiting on insecurity and the desire to feel love (from real human boymen!).
It ends on a slightly odd note with a bit of a damp closing song about how ‘boys will be boys’, intended to have some deeper meaning re: toxic masculinity and the endless cycle of manufactured boy bands. But this is a meaningless criticism in the scheme of the whole show, which is an incredibly enjoyable hour of surprisingly hard-hitting musical comedy. MAN!FEST next world tour, when?
MAN!FEST: The Drag Boy Band Musical is running until 31 August (except 17 and 26) at The Green at Pleasance Courtyard. Buy tickets here.
Image by Zoë Birkbeck, provided to The Student as press material.
