Halls - Turbine Theatre (7th - 30th July)

I absolutely adored this tonight!

While aimed at a similar youthful demographic, this is actually the polar opposite of high concept, broad comedy musicals such as Heathers, Eugenius or Be More Chill.

Instead, this is a low concept (and thus more difficult to market), naturalistic character-based comedy musical, like Millennials, but with a story.

It's a relatable story of Freshers in their first year at University, beautifully realised by it's cast of 8, funny and moving in equal measure.

Some spoilers follow. . .

If you want to imagine the story, just imagine the TV show "Sex Education" stripped of it's "youthful sex educator" high concept, instead just focused on the kids from different backgrounds, meeting each other, and living their lives, away from home for the first time.

Imagine "The Breakfast Club" without the high concept of the Breakfast Club detentions, but still with the bonding of the kids from different backgrounds.

As a fan of low concept masters such as Alexander Zeldin and Annie Baker, I love real and relatable characters in real and relatable situations, but it's hard to market such shows, as it's typically the high concepts that tantalise audiences.

About the highest concepts in this story are that each of the 8 freshers are types, and they all share one room, 15B: the Posh vegan girl with bags of money (May Tether); the working class Scouser who must work 2 jobs (Kelly Sweeney); the acting student (Elena Gyasi); the popular girl (Jen Pandya); the popular macho poser, a sort of teen Guy Ritchie (Lenny Turner, brilliant in the role); the studious geeky mummy's boy (Jacob Dachtler); the out-and-proud gay guy (Matteo Johnson) and the soft-spoken blundering Spaniard (Ivan Gonzalez).

The show, however, goes out of its way to humanise all these "types," so that they easily blend together and just about the biggest conflict in the show is when someone drinks someone else's milk from the communal fridge.

There are, however, great veins of comedy in the way all these multiple types see each other, and also great pathos.

For example, when the poor working-class Scouser with 2 jobs confesses to the rich posh girl that she can't spare the time to go out and sings "A Little Hard Work" (I'm just guessing the names of the songs, of course), Kelly Sweeney effortlessly ripped my heart out with her escalating passion. Like many of the songs in this, the feel is of modern country and western, Dolly Parton style, big-hearted climaxing pop ballads, inflected with Gary Barlow-esque understated lyrics, reflecting very British mundanities.

This same Dolly-Gary music-lyric pattern is also present in one of the strongest songs, when May Tether's posh girl sings "I Want More," about her unrequited affection for someone who is already hooked up with someone else, and Tether blows the roof off, exploding into an absolute pop crescendo with all these frustrated hidden feelings that have nowhere to go.

Other characters get similar songs that explore key worries: the popular girl worries that if she caves into teen Guy Ritchie's desire for her, she will be "Just Another Girl," and Jen Pandya nails every emotion; the gay guy gets to advise another character on how to be "The Real You," and Matteo Johnson crescendos with sensitivity; all the characters together reflect on how easily life can take momentous and potentially dark turns in "Just One Moment."

The universality and mundanity and commonality of the situations reflected in the songs makes the whole show immensely touching.

And the same qualities just as easily produce belly laughs, for example, the way the aforementioned milk-gate produces foreseeable and amusing reactions of everyone trying to get out of responsibility, and the hilarity of how someone who gets caught can be made to take the whole blame, even as other guilty parties watch on silently.

Much comedy comes from recognisable situations: anybody who has ever had a negative first impression of anybody else must surely be amused by "First Impressions," in which all the characters are thinking but not saying something about other characters; anybody who has played "Never Have I Ever" must laugh at the inevitable and predictable humiliations revealed in the "Never Have I Ever" song; anyone who has ever got sick of anyone at one time or another must surely laugh along with the cast as they side-eye each other, singing "Sick of You."

The song "Home" is short, sweet and profound, revealing how the concept of home changes for these young people as they become a "home" to each other.

All in all, this low concept, character -based show is absolutely winning when it comes to reflecting our lives back at us, helping us laugh hysterically about it, and then taking a poignant moment to contemplate it's passage.

I hope this show gets an audience, and I hope many of these cast members get to repeat their performances. 4 and a half stars from me for this show, even at this formative stage.