Saw this last night and thought it was WONDERFUL, with Jamie Muscato ON FIRE!
I wasn't as sensitive to the sound flaws as the poster above, and though the sound was a bit tinny/echoey/resonant/amplified(?) at first, I could hear all the words clearly from the Row D side stalls, with the gorgeous wind and string instruments never overpowering the vocals, and the dreaded (minimal for this show) percussion hidden discretely somewhere out of sight lol.
Behind the 30 piece orchestra, on a balcony facing the audience, were the Trinity Laban choir, 16 men and 23 women, dressed all in white, who thrillingly filled the aural spaces of big numbers like "June is busting out all over" and "Clambake," making the ensemble feel bigger than it actually was.
For a one and done concert, this massively exceeded my expectations.
Some spoilers follow. . .
Rebecca Caine's Nettie's warm, slow-building "You'll Never Walk Alone" was everything I hoped for, her ultimate high notes so successfully sustained that I thought she might bring down the building like Bianca Castafiore in Tintin lol.
Tim Prottey-Jones made for a sharp-eyed, sleazy, stock-still, watchful, slightly inscrutable Jigger Craigin, whose scene of winning cards may have been cut for time, but who, in an unexpectedly electric change, got to slide his own knife straight into Billy Bigelow's side in the fateful moment that Bigelow usually inflicts on himself. The effect was to make him feel even more villainous than usual.
Prottey-Jones' sinister lurking presence also allowed Ahmed Hamad's purposeful Mr. Snow to glare more furiously (his face a living anger emoji) than anyone has ever glared (Hamad has massive experience glowering, as it was his single cuckolded tear that Jamie Lloyd featured in close-up on the big screen in "Sunset Boulevard" lol) when Prottey-Jones laid his sleazy hands on Sophie Isaacs's Carrie Pipperidge.
This time Hamad got to soar musically, as well as visually, though, transforming that single cuckolded tear into a mega-whinge about supposedly "shattered dreams" in "Geraniums in the Winder," delivered in a powerfully operatic tenor, which made his "catch of herring" sound like the greatest loss of all to his prospective fiancé lol.
That fiancé was Goldilocks from the Palladium Panto, Sophie Isaacs, amusingly resembling a breathy Southern Belle Goldilocks, wailing hysterically in response to the "Geraniums" song, but generally sharing a lot of chemistry with Hamad, excitably marching around in time, singing sweetly, making moony eyes, and flirting about fleets of "great big boats."
Anyhow, Christine Allado has a soprano vocal from heaven, with a relaxed natural vibrato that is utterly pristine and stirring in the extreme. Her Julie's characterisation was not as angelic as her vocal, a bit more breathy and active than I expect from a human saint (Gemma Sutton's utterly serene Julie at the Arcola was perfect in that respect), but Allado's vocal was so divine that she was spellbinding regardless.
Besides, Jamie Muscato's Billy Bigelow is so laconic that a slightly more pushy Julie than usual was worthwhile for him to react to.
And ultimately, it's Muscato's Billy Bigelow that really made this night for me. He has a way of never forcing anything, of making every utterance feel like it comes out of the character's mind, and every singing cadence a natural part of his whole being.
They said of Ingrid Bergman that she was so compelling because she seemed to be doing nothing when she was acting. Muscato intuits this, that you don't posture to the moods of the music, but you let your mood shape the singing (or magically make it appear that way).
When he suddenly snaps, quickening and pinching words, like when he envisions his "son," in "Soliloquy," being bossed around by some "fat bottomed, flabby-faced, pot-bellied, baggy-eyed, BASTARD," it's like a casual dangerous throwaway flare-up of words flowing freely and naturally from his broken psyche, which is comfortably numb in the most dazed, confused, wounded and damaged way, until it suddenly dangerously, isn't. When Muscato's Bigelow realises that his "son" may be a girl, the word "girl" sounded it was an airbag hit by a car, the air whooshing out of the bottom of it, more sound than word. When Muscato's Bigelow gets really worked up, about not having money for his girl, he volcanically explodes for the desire of it, ready to "TAAAAKE" it or "DIIIIIE!"
Possibly, my greatest highlight of the show was a number that isn't in the movie, when Billy Bigelow demands a showdown with God, in "The Highest Judge of All:" his vocal marched forward towards his fate, hesitated like Gary Cooper in "High Noon," then cheerily charged into that confrontation with the Almighty with the absolute abandon of Billy the Kid, a fearless gunslinger unafraid.
So, like with the macho poster dude nurturing a baby, when this rebellious James Dean type crossed with a laconic John Wayne type, hesitates in his rampage towards hell, contemplating fatherhood and his own flaws, it's truly moving.
And in his deep natural tenor voice, Muscato's confident natural vocal proved every much the perfect instrument for his naturalistic acting. I really thought Muscato's Billy Bigelow was something precious and special, just like Rogers and Hammerstein's musical itself.
4 and a half stars, only held back by the restraints of the small ensemble size and the slightly tinny sound. A marvellous night out.
