Great British Bake Off - Cheltenham Everyman / Noel Coward

The cast recording of this is being released on 28 April. Four of the songs have already been released on streaming platforms. (Well, Apple Music for certain, I assume the others...)

Any plans for this to go off on tour after London? I reckon it would do good on the road!

I really do love the songs from this that have been released so far. The casting is also a massive plus - I just hope there is an opportunity for Damian Humbley and John Owen Jones to show off their amazing voices! Very tempted to book!

Two tickets for tonight (Saturday) available on the Noticeboard.

I posted this on behalf of a friend who can’t use his tickets. They’ve not sold and are now free to a good home if anyone wants them for tonight!

Saw this tonight and it's delightful: the Sondheimesque old-people-still-have-fun songs are of a higher calibre than the functional Waitress-style baking-metaphors-for-rediscovering-love-and-life songs. Claire Moore, John-Owen-Jones and Haydn Gwynne make showstopping hay out of the former songs, with Claire Moore's second half song justifying the cost of the ticket.

Some spoilers follow. . .

What the X Factor musical got wrong, this gets right.

Whereas both shows are multiple character revues held together by dual central narratives of a competition and a love story, this competition isn't a foregone conclusion, and this love story has a tender pulse. Also, this show's worshipped egotist of a show runner (not Paul Hollywood) is actually an empathetic human being rather than a God-Alien hybrid (not Simon Cowell).

Neither the competition (too gentle) nor the love story (derivative) are particularly powerful, but they are useful threads on which to hang some excellent entertainment.

The competition element utilises Graceful Mouat's on-point comic timing and superb singing skills to create a very modern villain out to steal the competition in a bid for social media glory. Though I rated her singing higher than her song, she's very funny and I loved the caustic comedy and devilish drama she brought to this otherwise gentle show.

The love story element is vastly lifted by Charlotte Wakefield's and Damian Humbley's sweet Waitress-reminiscent chemistry. Unfortunately, Waitress the Musical hangs over this element of the story like an albatross, as songs like "What Baking Can do" and especially "She Used to be Mine" find only pale but perfectly functional imitations in "Somewhere in the Dough" and "Rise." By taking baking metaphors into the emotional stratosphere, Sara Bareilles has doomed this show to seem merely sweet, lacking the salt. I cried helpless tears in Waitress, whereas here I was like "awww" lol.

The grown-up Sondheimesque stuff zings here, though: John Owen-Jones "Slap it like that" is genuinely funny, the Randy Newman-Sondheim-hybrid song, "I'd Never be Me without You" is absolutely brilliant, performed with mischievous gusto by Owen-Jones and Gwynne, and Claire Moore's Seaside-postcard-Sondheim stalker song (she's stalking Owen-Jones lol) in the second half blows Waitress's stalking song, "Never ever getting rid of me" out of the water, it's so appropriately unthreatening, but more than anything, outrageously and ebulliently funny! It is magnificent and it made me realise why someone as amazing as Claire Moore is in this thing: she's in it to steal it lol.

In the ensemble, Jay Saighal and Catrina Sandison make some magic in minor roles, and Zoe Birkett's singing is probably the best in the show, even if she doesn't have a character.

All in all, this is thoroughly entertaining, with at least two major highlights (Moore and the Owen-Jones-Haydn-Gwynne double act): a very happy 4 stars from me.

Did anyone spot the real Paul Hollywood in Royal Circle 😂 Wonder if he went backstage after to say hi to the cast

This has not been on my radar. I've never watched Bake Off, and know from clips on Gogglebox that I'd hate it.

Would that mean I probably wouldn't like the musical, or not?

It's a 10 from me (oops - wrong reality show - but let's have a poll).

I saw the matinee yesterday from the centre of the front row (also known as the flour zone) and this is a winner. Some great music, a fun plot, and all the baker types you'd expect to see. Each baker has their own theme at the start (and recurring occasionally during the show), which is a take off of another popular musical theatre song. A really engaging production. The Channel 4 TV programme this is based on is just a backdrop for an otherwise traditionally structured and presented musical.

The humour is rather broad. It didn't all hit for me, but I heard plenty of people laughing, and I laughed at other bits no one else reacted to (or got), so this should work for the demographic. The whole show is rather quaint and traditionally British. I don't think this would work outside the UK. There are lots of references to other Channel 4 programmes, for example. The only bit I think felt rather forced was a section on immigration, which I can see why it was there in a show about being British, but a worrying number of audience members treated this as an extended comedy section.

The whole show runs about 2 hours 30 minutes and I got the impression that this has been changed a bit since the earlier incarnation. I also had Pippa Cleary sat behind me, who proved she had the patience of a saint, having adopted one of the more senior members of the audience for the afternoon, answering his questions throughout. Still a few teething problems, like a piece of the automatically moving set getting stuck, but this was only the second preview. Plus, the two judges get entrance applause from the audience. What more could you want?

Looking forward to seeing this again in a few weeks. I would have said this was ripe for extension already at the Noel Coward, but there's already a show booked to go in there. It will either transfer or have a full life on tour.

Flour zone? Yikes. Maybe it's not such a bad thing the train strikes are stopping me getting there next month after all!

I’ll also be there on Thursday at the matinee for the same JOJ reasons. Saw it in Cheltenham and really enjoyed it so am having a day trip to London to see how it’s developed.