Ok, I confess, I just don't get it. This show is touring well as did its predecessor ... it must have a loyal audience ... but I am at a loss to understand the appeal.
The energetic and talented cast and the fab band deserve a much better vehicle than this. They have the talent and range to do a really exciting and memorable 60's tribute night but instead we get some horrendous mish-mash of a show. It isn't a musical, it isn't a play, it isn't a tribute show or juke box concert - in fact it has no idea what it is and consequently it is a bit of everything all done badly. The plot is weak, the dialogue dire and the acting (which may be down to the director) would shame a school play.
Perhaps these problems are all "intentionally left blank" so as to let the music shine through; which occasionally it does when the team are allowed to let rip on a whole song unsullied by "musical arrangement" like they do with Twist and Shout. Most of the time, however, the musical production lifts the original - I don't mean it raises it up, I mean it reduces it to lift music .... painful doesn't describe it. Why cut Telstar to a few bars? Why replace "gun" with "trunk" in House of the Rising Sun forcing yourself to rhyme with "drunk" rather than "run"?
