Strictly Ballroom - WYP / Piccadilly / Tour

I didn't enjoy the show and I've seen the movie several times (and it's great).

The issue for me was that it has no real right to call itself a musical.  It's half "Strictly Ballroom - The Play" and half a Will Young covers concert.  That's not a musical.  I enjoyed the aspects that bore some resemblance to the film, but the show isn't what it's selling itself to be.  It's like me calling myself a chef when I can knock up a half decent risotto, but I'm an accountant!

Haha!  Thank you    I just hide my accountant tendencies well!

Ah, guilty. And an Access database!! 🤓

Oops again!

"Quote" obviously has views on this matter as well since it has totally sabotaged my latest post!

I always thought it was set in the 80's.

It just felt like that era.

Well if you can't stand Will Young you could.. and this is controversial.. not go?

Miss Young does wear some rather lovely outfits though I'm reliably informed. 

One third Will Young covers concert, one third Drew McOnie dance show, one third lamebrained comedy, barely qualifying as a musical, I thought this a bit of a disjointed mess until Zizi Strallen glued those disparate parts together with a hugely appealing breakout, funny, dynamic, heartfelt central turn.

Some spoilers follow. . .

I've seen Zizi Strallen a ton of times, but she's never had a role as important as this one. The show's genre-bending might infuriate lovers of musicals, because the characters don't sing their emotions, they DANCE them. It might infuriate dance lovers, because there's just not enough dance: "Dancing with Myself" and Bizet's Habanera are two inspired Drew McOnie trademarked exceptions, but mostly characters stand around doing slightly offensive comedy of the "Aren't Aussies a bit simple" variety (this can be partially excused cos Baz Luhrman is making fun of himself, because the source material was the same, and because everybody in comedies are a bit simple).

But this comedy falls flat hard, and often, I found, except vis a vis: Zizi Strallen: Not only is she a knockout dancer and a winning presence, as anyone who saw her play the warm, vulnerable, younger version of Janie Dee's ice-cold Phyllis, in the National's Follies, will attest, but she is full on funny, here, as well. Her Patsy-Ferran-reminiscent expressive over-eager saucer eyes bulge geekily with each desperately gawky romantic mistep her character Fran makes toward Jonny Labey's dreamy dance king, Scott Hastings. Yet, Strallen never goes so far as to caricature Fran such that we don't care about her. In fact, while I cared a little bit about Jonny Labey's Scott, and a little bit about Stephen Matthews' much put-upon Doug Hastings, it was ONLY Zizi Strallen's Fran I cared ALOT about. And it really made the show for me, seeing this gawky, geeky, funny girl clumsily set about attaining her ambitions. And to see the clumsiness of that Just-Fran character turn into graceful magic on the dance floor in a dream dance pairing with Jonny Labey was just magic!

Apart from Strallen, the next most important ingredient to me enjoying this fluffy frothy confounding confection was Will Young. He is too self-effacing to make a great narrator of the story, I felt (I mean his bows lasted a millisecond, so much did the actor despise the spotlight), but as a mariachi-style accompaniment to the characters, serenading their cares from the sidelines, his voice is sweet, high-pitched, soft and beautiful, and he brings romance and tenderness to the proceedings, where otherwise there might be flat flailing comedy.

To Strallen's and Young's invaluable contributions, add some lovely McOnie choreography (though not enough), some pretty primary colours (the costumes are always everywhere), and a blend of eighties (Time after Time, Dancing with Mysel, Let's Dance) and sixties (Perhaps Perhaps, Hound Dog, Tequila) jukebox, and you have a quirky quaint funny winner.

Strallen is the key.

4 stars.

So of Baz Luhrmann films, we get Strictly Ballroom, But it looks like Broadway going to get Moulin Rouge, so who got the rough deal? Of course Moulin Rouge would be out of this universe.

I am still recovering from the Australians sending us, that god damm awful camp hit with a bus, at least that had a stellar performance from Tony Sheldon, where this is just plain awful, cheap, tacky and forced. Do we need to see another show, where the husband is hen pecked by his wife, but manages to get assertive for the end? This had more end of the pier about it than West End.

Someone needs to step up to the plate and grab hold of Strictly Ballroom and stick it in the corner.

Saw this tonight, what a load of RUBBISH!!! The staging was a total MESS! Not good and the worst set I’ve ever seen on the West End! 5/10

Rubbish
Mess

And you still award 5/10

The board is too funny

Baz Luhrmann is one of the guests on the BBC Radio Two breakfast show this Friday to discuss this show.

Isn't one of the points of reworking a show to create a part for a "star" that they will go on to do promo like this for you?

They should put "it's not good but I've seen worse" on the posters ☺