Boogie Nights - The 70's Musical
Seaton Delaval Arts Centre
Until Saturday 28th July
2018
The Arts Centre was as hot as a 70s discotheque as an
enthusiastic cast boogied their way through the classic 70s hits in a musical
written by written by Jon Conway with Shane Richie and Terry Morrison. Bye Bye Baby, Sugar Baby Love, Disco Inferno,
Y. M. C. A., We Are Family and Boogie Wonderland plus some Elvis hits are
performed by the live band under musical director Gareth Miller.
The essence of the tale is pretty much a British version of
that 70s US classic Saturday Night Fever
in so much as it looks at a disco crowd trying to make sense of their passage
into adulthood.
Disco-loving Debs (Sarah McBean) and Roddy (Stu Bennett) have been together for 5 years, as have their
best friends Trish (Madi Hindson) and Terry (Mark Robinson). Roddy has dreams
of becoming a rock star rather than getting a regular job, much to the
annoyance of his Dad Eamon (Ken Richardson). The Elvis-loving patriarch would much
rather he was paying his way and this adds to the discord in Roddy’s life. Another
problem is Dean (Kyle Yates), who is DJ at the club, who thinks Debs could do
better than Roddy. In pursuit of his dreams, Roddy starts working with the
singers, at the disco, Spencer (Martin Futers) and Lorraine (Katie Jackson).
Director Claire Willis has a fairly tight handle on
proceedings unlike the previous version of this that I saw. An ensemble of 12
further cast members also help the club to look full and there’s enough people
to do larger scale dance routines. Choreographers Mark Robinson and Hannah
Lazenby capture the spirit of the 70s boogie with a number of those routines.
This particular performance suffered from a number of sound
issues with microphones not always picking the vocal work up or being too loud
and distorted in the mix. This will be hopefully sorted in subsequent shows in
this run.
There were some highlights from the solo spots. Sarah
McBean gave a passionate I Will Survive
and Ken Richardson added real emotion to Always
On Your Mind. The ensemble numbers at the end of the second act were also a
treat.
It is weird to think of a 70s musical as a period piece, but
I suspect the majority of the cast were born after Ottawan got to number 2 with
D.I.S.C.O. The eagle eyed amongst you
might have spotted that that was in 1980… but a few anachronisms apart the set
was suitably orange and beige. The smoking in a venue and chauvinistic
attitudes towards women is very much of that time. Perhaps in years to come
this will be viewed as a challenging show for those reasons in the same way as
the King And I seem out of set now.
The Seaton Delaval Pantomime Society have clearly had fun
putting together their first full musical and hopefully they’ll push on to do
others in the future.
Review by Stephen Oliver.
Photos: Paul Cummings
Tickets:
Boogie
Nights hits the stage at the Seaton Delaval Arts Centre from Wednesday 25th to
Saturday 28th July. Tickets are priced at £11.00 full price and
£10.00 for concessions available from the Box Office on 0191 237 5460 or www.seatondelavalartscentre.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.