Review: Shout! The Mod Musical, Upstairs at the Gatehouse
Shout it loud and clear, this is a must see, folks! A joyous, brilliantly sung juke-box of all your sixties favourites celebrating the sounds, colours, beats, hairstyles and the ENERGY of the time. Groov -eeee!! Summary
Rating
Unmissable!
Upstairs at the Gatehouse is fast gaining the reputation as the go-to venue for exciting and top-quality productions of musicals, new offerings and cleverly imagined revivals. Shout! The Mod Musical can be safely added to the long line of successes.
Created by Philip George and David Lowenstein, it originally started off-Broadway and had its London premiere back in 2009. So here we are with the indomitable team, in every sense of the word (they tied the knot) of Joseph Hodges (director) and Jay Gardner (choreographer) in charge of this vibrant, explosive new reworking that gets the joint jumping from the very off.
I was going to say “Boy, this was so good!” but friends, we have an all female cast and band so I should say “Sister, this was so groovy.” The five actors give their all, playing off each other, using the organic solidarity that is palpable between them to create a fab evening of fun, energy and laughs.
The standard of the singing is superb, from the solo numbers to the intricate close harmony backing and arrangements of the iconic hits of the Sixties, well marshalled by Gabrielle Ball, MD, accompanied by Ella Ingram on keys two and Amy Gray on drums – impeccable beat, bravo! I have a minor niggle: the sound balance between band, soloist and backing group needs tweaking, but this is easily resolvable.
The conceit is that the five girls represent different types – pushy, homey, unsure, overconfident, sex-mad – with corresponding colours. So we have Gabrielle Cummins as Yellow Girl (pushy), Lauren Allan as Green Girl (sex-mad), Lauren Bimson as Orange Girl (homey but dissatisfied), Madelaine Doody as Blue Girl (confident poseuse), and finally Isabella Mason as Red Girl (unsure in life). What’s wonderful is the costumes reflect their colours and as the decade runs down, the style of both dress and wigs (a big shout to James Davies, but no beehive?) changes. If there was an award for best boots in a show, Shout would win hands down – or should that be feet down?!
The narrative glue connecting all these iconic hits, which is always the crucial question in juke-box musicals, is that the girls are avid readers of Shout, a kind of Jackie magazine, where an agony aunt gives ‘advice’ to the girls (constipatedly voiced by Pippa Winslow – perfect!) while Haydn Oakley voices the ads and articles of the time; selling creams, doing the man test, etc. The actors glean oodles of laughs from the juxtaposition of these relics of the Fifties trying to stem the flow of the new attitudes and energy, although, it has to be said, abortion rights, gay liberation and the pill came late in the decade (slightly tacked on here but no matter).
Still, the overall feeling is fun, frolics and frenetic dancing. The cast never stop – slinking, shimmering and shaking every body part. It is nostalgia for a certain section of the audience but simultaneously just like Glastonbury, where 80 year olds can get a whole crowd of young music fans singing along to timeless classics, of which ‘Downtown’, ‘Those Were the Days’, ‘Son of a Preacher Man’, ‘You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me’ and last but not least ‘Shout’ (audience participation folks, but this time joyous, irresistible audience participation), are just that – timeless, and will appeal to all ages.
This show hits all the right notes and how! Ding Dong, fab, pop-pickers!!
Writtenm by: Philip George and David Lowenstein
Directed by: Joseph Hodges
Choreography by: Jay Gardner
Musical direction by: Gabrielle Ball
Sound by: Phil Wilson
Produced by: Gardner Hodges
Shout! The Mod Musical plays at Upstairs at the Gatehouse until Sunday 20 July.