Memories are made of this - pt 2

Laura and Bobby

Dreamboats and miniskirts

Wolverhampton Grand

***

WHAT do you think of it so far? as Mr Morecambe might have enquired, and we all know the answer, although to be fair it is remarkably enjoyable, entertaining nonsense and a sparkling example of the jukebox musical genre.

This is the sequel to the hugely successful Dreamboats and Petticoats, which was set the late 1950s and early 60s, and we re-join the members of St Mungo’s youth club in 1962 as some group called The Beatles, or something like that, are just emerging from Liverpool, Bill Kenwright's home city.

And Liverpool as our intrepid would-be pop stars from Essex see it, is some place just past Birmingham.

Like its predecessor the characters are comic strip teen romance (think Valentine or Jackie), with all the depth of a drying puddle, while the plot and storylines make wafers look portly, but that hardly matters, after all this is not Shakespeare or Sondheim, and no one expects it to be, this is nostalgia, pure, fast paced, mainlining nostalgia.

Members of the audience of a certain age, and there were lots of them, quietly singing along, most in the same key, knowing the words as well as the cast, had their own stories filling in between songs. This was a night of memories.

Memories of summers when the sun always blazed down from blue skies; blokes being baffled by the mysteries of the engineering principles employed in the operation of bra clasps; girls finding tissues had more alluring uses then merely wiping noses; discovering, more in hope than expectation, what on earth the barber had been offering for the weekend for all those years. It was a time when love was all around and you found love hurts and breaking up was hard to do.

It is a strange how youth is appreciated more and more the further its slips into the past.

Joe Brown’s A Picture of You was a pleasant, if uninspiring, opening number while Dreamboats and Petticoats served as the link for those with memory problems (see audiences of a certain age above) but when Stay, the Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs hit, stayed a little bit longer, the backing group grew to hundreds and eyes glazed over as memories were revisited.

Alex Beaumont as Bobby has a decent voice as does Alastair Hill as Norman. The pair sounded good together so it’s a pity a couple of Everely Brothers hits couldn’t have been squeezed in.

Bobby’s on-off romance with Laura is . . . welrayl on-off, while former would be love machine Norm is settled down with the now pregnant Donna and is working in that most romantic of rock god occupations, down the sewers,

One Everely number did creep in,  All I have to do is Dream, which was sung beautifully by Laura, played by Elizabeth Carter with friends Sue, Laura Darton and Donna, Anna Campkin.

Carter and Campkin are back in the roles they played in the 2012 tour of Dreamboats and Petticoats with many other members of the petticoat cast continuing to sail on the good ship Dreamboat.

David Luke, who played Eric in the original, plays Laura's brother Ray, (pictured) group manager by night and ladies' hairdresser by day with a clientele such as Muriel, played by Laura Sillett, who brings along a bass sax to pass the time under the drier. Funny place Essex.

Dreamboats I saw Bobby and Laura, after many teen trials and tribulations, win a national song writing competition with eponymous song Dreamcoats and Petticoats.

Dreamboats II sees them singing their now hit song on Ready Steady Go – hands up if you remember Keith Fordyce and Kathy McGowan – before it all goes wrong yet again and we have another couple of hours of teen angst.

Bobby drops a huge clanger with Laura and she goes off on her own to become a mega solo star leaving him looking like a bit of something Norm works with in his day job.

But Bobby repents in time for a happy ending when he finds his own stardom as as a singer with the group from the youth club, the Conquests, who are appearing on the same bill on Laura’s national tour.

Bobby and Laura are back together, and everyone can all live happily ever after – at least until Dreamboats III comes along.

The show crams 38 songs into two and a half hours, a few of them perhaps less well known while others need only the opening bars to have the audience grinning from year to year ready to sing along.

Alan Howell as record producer Tony gives us a fine The House of the Rising Sun while Norman and Bobby give Roy Orbison a whirl with Oh Pretty Woman.

Alex Beaumont wrings the emotion out of It’s Over and throw in songs like A Groovy Kind of Love, Venus in Blue Jeans, I only Want to Be with You, The Night has 1000 eyes, I get Around, and Breaking Up Is Hard to Do and nostalgia engulfs the audience like a warm blanket.

It demands a cast who can play instruments and as well as the eight excellent musicians on stage we have Bobby and Tony throwing in their hand on guitars and even Norman pitches in with a creditable Blues harp. And the cast can't be faulted for their unflagging enthusiasm in a lively performance. When the cast appear to be enjoying themselves then so will the audience.

The script is by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran (Birds of a feather) who sneak some nice one liners and innuendo in among the dialogue and producer Bill Kenwright, who also directs with Keith Strachan, has found a very successful commercial formulae - keep up a fast pace, simple story and a constant stream of hits with a few slow ballads to add feeling and feed the emotions.

The hair and costumes from Ann Gooch complement the music and the result is a show that never sets out to be anything other than what it is, a night of nostalgia with some 60's classics wrapped around a teen comic storyline that wouldn't tax a halfwit . . . and it works with a near full house leaving with a smile on their face and a head full of memories. To 27-06-15

Roger Clarke

23-06-15

 

 

And on the B side

****

THIS sequel to the hit musical Dreamboats and Petticoats is simply bursting with memorable pop songs from the past, delivered with great enthusiasm by a young and energetic cast.

It’s a pulsating show from the opening number to the all action finale and if the story of the on-off romance of wannabe chart topping teenagers Bobby and Laura is a touch run-of-the-mill, the music certainly makes up for that.

The first night audience clearly loved the new format of so many members of the cast playing a range of instruments on stage, and in one scene two young ladies are playing a saxophone and a clarinet under hair dryers!

Alex Beaumont (Bobby) and Elizabeth Carter (Laura) have fine voices and the perfect chemistry for the leads, opening up with Dreamboats and Petticoats, and later impressing with A Groovy Kind of Love, while Alex touches all the emotional buttons with ‘It’s Over’.

But it really is a terrific team effort, with sparkling performances, too, from Alastair Hill (Norman), Laura Darton (Sue), David Luke (Ray), and Anna Campkin (Donna).

All together it’s a bouncy cocktail of nearly 40 terrific tunes from the sixties, a non-stop musical treat.

Directed by Bill Kenwright and Keith Strachan, the show runs to 27.06.15

Paul Marston

 

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