Why Am I So Single? - Garrick

A great point, this is a Millennial musical aimed at Gen Z

I know the references are more targeted to millennials (if you were born in 1981, you were becoming a teenager when Friends first launched, you were there when it started coming out on VHS and DVD) and older Gen Z babies, but Friends was a cultural phenomenon and most people in their 40s and 50s also remember that and 00s pop music being everywhere, even without the rest. They do even make a ringtone joke at one stage - which is hilarious considering they would have been part of the Crazy Frog generation.

However, it does also give them a 'get out' clause, should it be less successful - they and their team can say it was just 'difficult second album' syndrome - basically the only opportunity you get in your career to do exactly what you want.

And so they have - it's subversive in a way, which maybe it shouldn't come as unexpected considering they basically became industry distruptors with Six - giving us a fun, effervescent, semi-autobiographical show, that playfully pokes fun at the conversations they've had about finding it difficult to write that 'second album', whilst putting an (iconic) queer character as the joint lead, and keeping their distinctive ear for melody and lyric intact. 

I think this board is a little bit obsessed with this Gen Z vs Millenials thing and I don't think when it comes to musical theatre that bears much fruit in terms of what will land with audiences. I can see why a 60 year old may not connect with content heavily geared to a 22 year old, but the idea that the 22 year old will feel greatly alienated because someone 5 or so years older than them wrote the material is a bit silly.

The other thing worth saying is that I don't think bringing projects straight into large theatres is something to be discouraged. I know people like the scrappy fringe aesthetic of something coming up via the Southwark Playhouse or doing Edinburgh for 4 weeks, and I know it's worked well for other projects, but that's not a healthy state of affairs for the future of West End musicals. Miss Saigon (as a random example) makes the most sense when it's pumped full of money, is big and loud and filled with a large cast and big set pieces and a lush orchestra. It's lovely to have a route for smaller scale shows to grow and build audience and acquire additional layers of funding as they make their way to a big house, but to make that the only way you can get a new musical on in London would stop the creation of the exact shows that have defined successful British musical theatre for half a century. Moss and Marlow clearly were given a lot of leeway and have brought a show that perhaps shouldn't have got this far rapidly to the Garrick, but we're never going to reclaim from Broadway the ability to create big showstopping new musicals unless producers take a big punt on them sometimes. This time it's not worked out, but maybe next time it will.

No, the band are at the top at the back of the stage. The MD conducts it from a keyboard up there which is hard to see from the front stalls.

Sounds awful.  I think above I said this about the film 'La La Land' - where we're supposed to weep for the couple that they both found great success a particular way, when they might instead have found great success a different way together. Just to underline their 'lucked out' privilege they do however do something selfless: they save the integrity of the Blues from the clutches of...the only prominent Black character in the film (a humiliated John Legend). 

If I come back to this board loving the show, then I really did love it, as I'll be going in with arms folded: 'impress me then'.  Tbf it has happened before. 

I had mixed feelings about Six creators Lucy Moss and Toby Marlow’s new musical. It was always going to be a difficult task to follow up what has become a global mega hit but, for the most part, this piece of musical theatre is a raucous good time.

It follows Oliver and Nancy (I know), who are essentially avatars of the real life Marlow and Moss, as they navigate their way through the Wild West that is dating apps. There are some proper bangers in the score, none more so than the recently released ‘8 Dates’, which sees Jo Foster (Oliver) bring the energy early doors.

Ellen Kane’s choreography is captivating, with the ensemble pulsing as one, throughout the club-inspired score. But the show is not without its belting ballad; Leesa Tulley (Nancy) steals the show with ‘Just In Case’. The “I would abandon it all” refrain is already stuck in my head. I sat next to and chatted with her at another show earlier this year and I didn’t know who she was - I certainly do now!

The comedy broadly works, with Fraser’s masterful timing and delivery driving the show. But this really would have been better as a 90 minute single-act show. It gets way too flabby in Act Two and the emotional ending is edged at for what feels like a lifetime. In hindsight, the ill-advised Act One closing Bee song is where it starts to outstay its welcome.

One of the issues is that Moss is credited as director. I’m not sure that’s always the best idea and a fresh pair of eyes would have been helpful for the writing duo. This show would have also benefited from starting life in fringe theatre to help find its best self and iron out the creases rather being catapulted straight into the Garrick.

However, when this show shines, it really is something impressive. The Meat Market number is a well-staged piece of theatre. Likewise, Disco Ball and the tap routine song lands well. There’s a lot of good and it feels like there is a really good show in there, with a few tweaks and cuts throughout.

Three stars.

Thank you for reminding me of this song, I need to add it to my MT playlist on Spotify

Why AmI So Single? Or as another theatreguy so wisely asked “Why are young people so self-pitying and self-indulgent?” The second question perhaps answers the first. Here we have a musical catered to those still hungry for Six, by the same writers seeking a second box office success, now supposedly writing a musical about themselves.
It had to be another on-speed musical, lyric heavy, but this time without Henry VIII providing the plot. They have reinvented themselves as typical of their audience, young, aggrieved, and asking that title question. There’s Nancy the female singleton, and there’s Oliver the gay lonesome ‘they’, bosom buddies seeking the loves of their lives. Note their names, taken from Lionel Bart’s Oliver! - oh, the cheek of it!

The script is knowing, repeatedly answering its own question, but still thinks it is worth asking. The obvious answer, they finally decide, comes in a song - “Men are Trash!”. (Maybe nothing rhymed with the fashionable ‘toxic’ - no wonder they are single!) But there are some good songs which would fit better in a different context and sung with less of the desperation to be show-stopping. The choreography is frenetic, but best is a number in tap-trainers with Noah Thomas leading the ensemble who play everything from mates to animated home furnishings (yes, really, it’s that sort of an aren’t-we-having-fun show).

I assume by their behaviour that the cast are meant to be teenage-ish, but Leesa Tully (or did we see Collette Guitart, the understudy?) is oddly miscast as a too-old Nancy. She is very much the straight foil to Jo Foster who steals every scene as the waspish and eternally juvenile Oliver. His/their campery, prancing and posing in a skirt and fluffy pink slippers, is continually OTT; he’s a charmless cousin to the Jamie ‘everyone is talking about’. The audience loves both Nancy and Oliver, especially with their carefully rehearsed ‘impromptu’ winks and quips to us, their new best friends.

Tv’s iconic Friends comes up as a role model for this bunch to both copy and ridicule, and it seems to be a hook to involve both the audience and young cast alike. It’s a show not for my generation, I’m the wrong demographic, so excuse my miserable response. The audience guffawed, they whooped and cheered, they clapped and hollered, even during the songs. It’s a hit, of course, but would be a much better show with a whole hour plus the Interval cut from it, making it just like the slick but mighty 90 minute Six, still wowing the world.

This one calls itself “a big fancy musical”, but I don’t fancy it, nor even any of the cast. And I doubt it will be as big as Six. A second show is always a mountain to climb for its writers, but this one stays stuck in camp. Just 2 stars.

Stick that on the poster 😂

This is the best way to get me to see this LOL.

Get a box so that you can nod off in comfort; I know that I was there for the 2nd act but it was just a big old blank.

Do the alternates have scheduled shows each week when they are scheduled to perform?