|
|
 |
| |
Our king of rock ’n’ roll is better than any panto!
THE YOUNG ONES
Upstairs at the Gatehouse
SOME folk will tell you that Christmas isn’t Christmas without a bit of Cliff Richard.
Not so convinced about the festive delights of Mistletoe And Wine or The Millennium Prayer?
This neat stage production of The Young Ones, an all-singing, all-dancing film vehicle from 1961, might make the Cliff scrooges reconsider. Love Cliff or hate Cliff, this show is better than any panto that you might be thinking about taking the family to this year.
When Elvis started making movies, Cliff, apparently being the British answer to Presley, started doing the same.
We all remember the big red bus of Summer Holiday, but The Young Ones is a little less known, maybe because the songs aren’t as good.
The plot is also as thin as you might expect a film vehicle to be: kids running around shouting “let’s save the youth club, hey, why don’t we put on a show”, overcoming adversity by convincing an old fogey property tycoon that singing and dancing is more fun than building office blocks. Charming.
But what we are really here to see are some ace dance routines (check, this show’s got them), a few jokes (check) and some knockout musical numbers (check, check, check).
Where the original material is lightweight in patches, director John Plews saves the day with some clever editing of the script and punching in a few Cliff songs that weren’t in the film.
Jason Langley excels as a Cliff-a-like in the lead role of Nicky Black, even if he did confess that he hadn’t seen the original film until the auditions.
His endearing rendition of When The Girl In Your Arms will stick in the memory. Look out too for Richard Foster-King revelling in the role of Ernest, the customary geek character, and Emily Eden who almost steals the show as his equally “square” girlfriend, Wendy.
Credit too for Racky Plews, whose imaginative choreography livens up some of the original padding. There were some old ones enjoying The Young Ones on Tuesday night – I spotted former BBC newsreader Richard Baker, who has a special cameo in the show, also looking like he was having fun. Teddy Green, who was in the original film, was also toe-tapping in the back row. The cast couldn’t have wished for a more fitting commendation unless Cliff had turned up himself.
Until January 27
020 8340 3488 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
