All
You Need Is Love -
tour prior to West End run
Directors and Co - Devisors - Jon Miller and Pete Brooks
Cast - Jon Boydon, Cathie Carday, Jacqui Dubois, Peter Eldridge,
Ben Forster, Hannah Jane Fox, Adrian Hansel, Leon Maurice-Jones, Linda
John-Pierre, Brenda Jane Newhouse, Alexis Owen-Hobbs and Neal Wright.
Design - Laura Hopkins
Musical Staging and Choreographer - Nigel Charnock
Choreographer - Kate Prince
Lighting designer - Jenny Kagan
Producers - Wizard with The Churchill Theatre Bromley
Venue - Edinburgh Festival Theatre then touring- gets to West End
Queens Theatre on 21 May 2001
Dates - 24 - 28 April 2001
Performance lasts 2hr 30mins with interval.
Reviewer -Thelma Good
All you need is love for the lyrics of Lennon and McCartney, plus imagination
in dance and musical arrangement, coupled with singing and tremendous
talent from all the disciplines involved. You have to get it right if
you're going to do a Musical show with Beatles songs and these guys
and dolls have. It delivers what it promises, a magical mystery tour,
with a dozen performers who act and dance their way through 53 songs.
This magical musical trip combines the technical wizardry of this century
with the some of the most memorable music of the last.
The simple set
is flexible, moving in to make intimate scenes, moving out as the whole
cast gives us movement full of incident, remiminscent of Luc Bondy's
The Hour We Knew Nothing Of Each Other. Yes folks it's a quality
show. But fun, such fun as we see how many stories these lyrics give
rise to - boy meets girl, girl leaves boy and all the combinations beyond
and in between. The lighting is superb, wait till the Yellow Submarine.
Yes we get one of Ringo's and with Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
we're away, bathed in technicolour dreams too. Like the Beatles this
production is very inventive, giving suprises, laughs and delights when
you don't expect them.
Songs switch between sexes and some like We Can Work It Out are
sung arguments or conversations and All My Loving, is one of
some very moving duets. All the cast have their solo moments, each of
them gems. What makes this show is that they work so well together,
making the loving vignettes, living, moving celebrations of their talents
as well as the Fab Four's. Linda John-Pierre's voice is in the same
register as Paul's so Let it Be and The Fool on the Hill
sounds just so right. Neal Wright, who has more sexiness than a nimble
Chubby Checker, does comic and soul with a voice of strength and melody.
Some songs have the George Martin arrangements ( Jon Miller worked with
him in the 70s) sounding like my treasured LPs but minus the scratches.
Others are in new, sometimes startling arrangements, I particularily
liked the acapella ones for the men.
Go and see this if you like dance, music, singing and superbly directed
shows. It doesn't have an over arching story like Mamma Mia,
but by taking the songs and making them into stories, it echoes well
what I did when the songs were new. Singing them when I was in love,
when I was lonely and when I needed a friend. The
finale which is a wonderful set from Sgt Pepper and The White Album
took me back to that time when I first found out that With a Little
Help From My Friends All You Need Is Love, and I was Just seventeen,
you know what I mean!
© Thelma Good April 24 2001
