The Merchant of Venice meets The Muppet Show in the long-awaited revival of Ned Wilkinson’s Monty Python-esque musical Fosgate: Ferret Loan Officer, which has returned to Orlando Fringe under acclaimed director Kenny Howard 13 years after its original outing.
England’s scenic Blackpool Beach has seen an influx of entrepreneurial anthropomorphized animals (with unauthorized apologies to George Orwell), and Fosgate’s financial firm is ready to take usurious advantage of them. But when the Shylock-like ferret’s ewe assistant Violet (Sarah Lee Dobbs) falls for indebted carriage horse Henry (John Gracey), it will take the help of a human barrister (Morgan Howland-Cook) to prevent this rapacious rodent from gnawing off his pound of horseflesh.
The sly script’s literary lunacy nicely overshadows the source material’s inherent antisemitism with a Benny Hill episode’s worth of silly slapstick and wacky but well-staged musical numbers. Wilkinson’s pastiche score is pleasantly forgettable in the best British music hall tradition, and although his witty words are occasionally obscured by the English accents, enough of his Shakespearean puns land to generate knowing groans from Anglophilic audience members.
An ideal all-ages show, Fosgate offers enough PG-rated animal antics to entertain the kids, while the social subtext and innuendo will sail over little heads for their parents to enjoy. Since two key cast members were absent, it’s impossible for me to fairly judge Fosgate’s press preview as a finished product, but the way that the remaining performers compensated (especially stage manager Sean Dunphy, stepping in on short notice as a social media-obsessed Ringtail) bodes well for this professionally polished production.
Fosgate: Ferret Loan Officer
Peach Venue, Orlando Family Stage
60 minutes; all ages
$15
Get tickets
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This article appears in May 14-20, 2025.