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REVIEW
​SUMMER HOLIDAY 

Tuesday 23 - Saturday 27 August
​Cliffs Pavilion, Southend on Sea
✭✭☆☆☆ 2/5
I was quite looking forward to Summer Holiday; I’ve not had one this year and needed a bit of cheering up.  It was often during a typical English school summer holiday, when inevitably it was raining outside, that my sister and I would sit and watch re-runs of Cliff Richard movies and Summer Holiday was always a favourite.  This, not least because it had such great songs in it -  In the Country, Summer Holiday, Travellin’ Light, Bachelor Boy, Move It, Living Doll, The Young Ones and On the Beach to name but a few.  These films were full of teenagers in pursuit of love and were the English film industry's equivalent of the Elvis films that were a huge hit at that time.  Cliff was our own little version of Elvis and boy, did he do his utmost to emulate him.

Writers, Mark Haddigan and Michael Gyngell have come up with a brand new stage adaption of the Summer Holiday which somehow manages to make it look like a parody of itself with some pretty over-the-top performances.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a hard working cast who have energy in abundance and this is shown to amazing effect in every musical number. There's a high level of choreography involved in this production thanks to Director/Choreographer, Racky Plews.  The songs are sung well, despite the sound levels on the opening night not being great, and there are some lovely harmonies under the direction of Musical Director, Robert Wicks; but a lot of the characters in this production just don’t endear; in fact, most of the time they are just downright irritating. 

Star of the show, Ray Quinn’s first appearance on stage brought with it a tiny little undercurrent of delight from the first night audience and he certainly proved that he can sing and dance to a high standard but I wasn’t quite sure what happened to his voice.  
Playing the Cliff Richard role of heartthrob, Don, his speaking voice was uncannily similar to that of Ewan McGregor’s when he played Obi Wan Kanobi in Star Wars.  I couldn’t quite fathom how or why this super posh teen was working on the London Buses but no matter; the audience didn't seem to care.

The other star of the show is the whopping great big double decker bus which completely dominates the stage and I couldn’t have been the only one slightly concerned that, with the rather steep rake on the Cliffs stage, it would plunge into the front row of the audience!

As the plot and the double decker takes the teens across Europe for their Summer Holiday, they pick up a trio of girl singers whose car has broken down and in Paris a stowaway in the form of a young boy called Bob.  Bob turns out to be Barbara (played by Sophie Matthew), an up and coming singer fed up with being dominated by her over ambitious mother, Stella.  Needless to say, once it’s discovered that Bob is Barbara, things start to hot up for Don whose three pals have already paired up with the girls leaving him to declare to Barbara that he’ll always be a Batchelor Boy.  Yeah, right.

Stella and agent, Jerry, on the hunt for Barbara, are the comedy double act of the show with Taryn Sudding fully channelling her inner Kristin Chenoweth as the super annoying Stella and Wayne Smith, who managed to find all the comedy bones in his role as Jerry.  There is a lot of fun to be had in this show and a lot of humour but it just didn’t translate well in its delivery.

The writers seem to want to titillate the show up a little bit for modern audiences and there was one rather risqué dance routine which involved the characters wearing nothing but bath towels covering their modesty.  Not sure Cliff would have agreed with that! 

Most surreal moment of the night goes to the dancing goats - yep, I did say dancing goats.  I really have no clue what possessed the person who sat down and thought that was a terrific idea.  A real pick your jaw up from the floor moment.  Completely bonkers.


What this production does achieve, however, is the realisation that the score will always remain popular to both young and old and this is borne out in the encore at the end of the show when the audience really start to engage, getting up, tapping their toes and singing along with the cast.

Unfortunately, for me, there just wasn’t enough depth in the characters to leave me caring whether they enjoyed the rest of their holiday or not.
​I think I'll just get off at the next stop....
​
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Summer Holiday tells the story of Don and his fellow London Transport mechanics as they journey together in a red double-decker bus through Paris, the Alps, Italy and Greece. Along the way they pick up a girl singing group and a young American pop star who is on the run from her domineering mother!

This hit - filled musical features many of 1960’s biggest songs including In the Country, Summer Holiday, Travellin’ Light, Bachelor Boy, Move It, Living Doll, The Young Ones and On the Beach.

Tickets for Summer Holiday are on sale now. Further casting to be announced in due course.

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