(Edited highlights of the panel's review produced from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight Review.)

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PAUL MORLEY:
I am not sure it's as good as a great episode of the Jerry Springer show. I think it's as good as an average episode. It's an opera in the Two Ronnies sense. It's a series of skits probably written by the Simpsons writers at the top of their ability. It's a kind of blasphemous, controversial model that we have been waiting for since the life of Brian or The Producers, that kind of thing. I often have trouble when operas are sung in English, but because most of the words in this are swear words, it seems to me the best way to sing English in an opera. All the power held back on the Springer Show itself by the beeps is suddenly liberated and becomes part of the tremendous power the show has, as a piece of straightforward comedy. In a way, the genius of the show is thinking of doing it. Then the sky's the limit. There's no way you can stop. I don't want to put anybody off going to see it, because it's tremendous fun. It's like being tickled. It's on the button, it's so funny. There are questions which occur, they inhabit a moral vacuum in the way that Springer himself does. So it is truly built in his image, which goes towards some of the things in the show.

BONNIE GREER:
For about twenty minutes it's funny, it's a twenty minute idea. It looks like a Fringe piece, stretched to its absolute limit. There is some wonderful singing in it. The cast is tremendous. Michael Brandon. There are two award-winning performances in the show. When you strip back the black man with the diaper and the fat girl who wants to be a pole dancer, if you strip that back, you have a conventional Cambridge footlights-type evening. The second act is a total mess. This is a musical. I haven't read any reviews that actually talked about the music. This is a pastiche, I think in the opening, there's a Bach pastiche, and then the rest is like Stephen Sondheim, 1983, around 'Sunday in the Park with George'. I am thinking, "When is this thing going to start?"

PAUL MORLEY:
It's nothing you have never heard before. What's interesting is that it seems to be the gentlemen responsible for making it have come from an alternative world, and they desperately want it to be The Producers, a West End extravaganza. You could feel a group of committees trying to turn something that's not popular into something that is popular. You can see they are desperately trying to have a big hit.

MARK LAWSON:
It's certainly the filthiest show ever staged at the National Theatre.

MICHAEL GOVE:
Absolutely. There are more profanities in two hours than a stag night with squaddies. It is remarkable. I saw it when the National Theatre was full of a middle class mainstream audience. They thoroughly enjoyed it. It's really a Footlights show with knobs on, literally. It's a student style show but with a degree more intelligence and 150% more professionalism. In that respect, most of the audience, like myself, were carried along by the sheer joie de vivre of the performance.

BONNIE GREER:
This is not a cutting edge muscial. This is a deeply old-fashioned. I could see Kenneth Williams able to do this if he was able to say the words.