Something Rotten! in Concert - Theatre Royal Drury Lane

Went to the matinee this afternoon, and absolutely loved it! I seem to agree with all the comments above (especially re Jason Manford). My highlight was Gary Wilmot too. The audience loved it as well, loads of prolonged laughter, cheering and the obligatory standing ovation. For me, it was such fun, an easy 5*, and I'd have gone straight back this evening if I lived in London.

Great fun tonight.
Really well done as usual with Fourth Wall - great sound and a proper production.

Fleeshman was...exceptional and I might never recover.
Manford VERY miscast in this though - just didn't have the showmanship for it, nor did he have the acting or singing chops (or really the comedy chops tbh)

So stagey though - so a fun 4 stars.

Row M of the stalls! I thought we’d peaked when Gaby Roslin was sat two seats away from us, until Hannah sat in the gap haha.

If the one star rating isn't a troll it would be great to have a comment why they disliked Something Rotten so much. I LOVED it !!

Made me laugh even more than the Police Cops Musical and Gary Wilmot is a legend. Palladium panto won't be the same without him.

If Your Lie In April can make it from concert to a full staging surely this can and should.

Yes they did.

Although I'd say most of the male actors usefully adopted their slightly more high-pitched child-like panto voices (Frank Spencer was everyone everywhere), which is why the whole thing worked so well. Goodbye threatening masculinity, hello childlike silliness and camp lol.

When actors behave this way, the whole audience knows not to take the story seriously and get ready for some raucous pisstaking laughter.

Marisha Wallace was a brash brusque version of her own American accent, which also worked as her character is desperate to show she can do what a man can do, ala Upstart Crow lol.

Richard Fleeshman did put on a deep Scottish accent when he was in disguise lol, but otherwise was a flash George Michael superstar version of himself.

I saw the matinee yesterday and LOVED it.

Some spoilers follow. . .

When I watched the Tony Awards performance on YouTube to assess whether I wanted to see this, and how much I wanted to pay, it all seemed so razzle dazzle and out to impress, with Nostradamus getting his vision of musicals being the future all at once, and then showing off brazenly. That didn't make me laugh.

Gary Wilmott didn't do that at all. He went straight into his childlike Palladium Panto version of himself, and seemed to constantly discover new things about the future every 5 seconds, constantly filled with "whoo hoo" childlike amazement. Not only that, but I recall that Wilmott had done a list of musicals in one of his panto appearances, and this is basically another list of musicals lol.

I felt Jason Manford, playing a well-meaning but insensitive version of himself, Nick, worked wonders anchoring this thing, his soft yet blunt regular guy Mancunian tones establishing the most masculine you were allowed to be without being considered a total villain.

His underappreciated genius of a manchild metrosexual brother, Nigel, was played so sweetly super-sensitively stutteringly high-pitched, by budding superstar, Cassius Hackforth, that I'll bet 100 percent of the audience wanted to give him a hug of congratulations every time he whimpered out a tentative word. Hackforth's Nigel probably had the highest Q-rating (indicating universal likeability) of any character I've ever seen on stage lol.

There was probably no funnier sex scene on stage this year than Evelyn Hoskins moaning sexually at Hackforth's every Shakespearian poem delivered in pure Norman Wisdom helium breathiness.

Cameron Blakeley, as Brother Jeremiah, the persecuting religious spoilsport, adopted a deep masculine Monty Python villainous bully voice, but always hilariously and brilliantly trailed into pure Kenneth Williams as his mouth was unwittingly constantly crowded with unwanted innuendo about rods and Bottoms lol.

It was so great to see Richard Fleeshman again in the West End after he last left us for "Barcelona" as Space Cadet Airman Andy in "Company." His super-smooth show-off of an evil George Michael tinged Shakespeare, constantly singing his poems for screams from the Fangirls, was a laugh riot that actually topped the similar boyband superstar featured in "Fangirls" for pure narcissistic egotism and cynicism lol.

These actors, all of them, delivered the adequate ("Welcome to the Renaissance") to excellent ("A Musical") material in absolutely top form.

I loved this to the tune of 4 and a half stars.

Would love it at the actual Globe

Thoroughly enjoyed this last night, as did the rest of the audience clearly from the reaction! Hopefully it will lead to a West End run- if it does I wonder whether there would be any thought given to beefing up the female roles- this was the only thing that was lacking for me.

I thought Jason Manford did a decent enough job, Richard Fleeshman was fantastic- very similar to Christian Borle's performance but in the best possible way! Cassius Hatchfork was definitely the standout. I also hadn't heard of him before but I look forward to seeing him in other roles in the future.

Great to hear this was so well received.

Methinks this will get a full staging on the back of this. Hopefully without Manford.

Nick needs to be a showman - Manford just is not a showman and I wish we'd stop casting him in musicals because he can sort of sing and has some public recognition.

I have only seen him in Curtains and don't wish to see him in another musical ever again. He is not an actor.

Me three. Didn’t like his acting in Chitty either. Panto panto Panto. He has a nice enough voice but it’s all a bit “pub singer”. No nuance.

I am a fan so perhaps bias, but I do think he’s getting a bit of a hard time here. As ‘stunt’ castings go, he’s at the very least a safe pair of hands and actually I think does a pretty good job. On the whole, I also think he does a lot for the theatre community in the mainstream too so another tick from me.