Brighton Year-Round
Years: 2024 2023 2022 2021 2020 2019
Brighton Year-Round 2024
What brings this musical home is the drawing-together of threads that hang loose in Act One. And finally you believe in a story that doesn’t flinch from darkness and sings its distress. Thoroughly enjoyable.
In Ryan Kopel and Lauren Conroy two future stars are born within a first-rate cast led by the exquisitely moving Alice Fearns; and Kopel with such a range is someone whose next role will probably surprise even him. Two and half hours blaze by like a first date. Outstanding.
For Entertainment Purposes Only
Philip Ayckbourn’s songs are the heart of this collection. It’d be thrilling to see a full musical here; and staged in London. Enthusiastically recommended, there’s gems, with more of Ayckbourn’s elegiac sensibility than I’ve ever seen. More of this please.
You’re not going to see anything this special in most (if any) revivals, however luxury-cast. In stripping-back, then regrowing a complete ensemble with even lesser songs, this is the most complete Oliver! we’re likely to see.
In short, a fabulous example of British talent, now endangered, bringing quadruple threat to a magnificent production. Not all such mainstream shows on tour even approach outstanding, but this truly is.