Oh! What A Night
February 22, 2008
Oh! What A Night
Venue: Sunderland Empire
Date Reviewed: 21st Feb 2008
The musical Oh! What A Night has been around for some time but it has been revised for the 2008 tour and appears to be still bedding in to its new guise. We now have a set made up of white screens that can be used to back project pictures that take us from high over New York to the inside of the Inferno Disco and recorded music.
Kid Creole again leads the show as the owner and DJ of the Inferno Disco and shows the audience he can sing still and dance.
The story line, as such, is just a way of linking all the 80s hits together. The main story involves a Hollywood producer coming to the Inferno to find the best dancers for an up and coming movie set in New York (where the Bee Gees have been signed to write the music). Not only does she find the dancers but ends up agreeing to use the disco as the night club in the film. At the same time we have one of the Inferno workers trying to trick Kid Creoles character in to giving him the disco to pay off his debts.
The plot, as it is, links the songs together and it is a great trip down memory lane for people in their forties and beyond. But even though the audience were asked to clap, sing, stamp their feet and dance from the word go, it was not until the first notes of YMCA that there was any real audience participation. Then immediately arms were in the air making the YMCA signs, people were clapping along and the atmosphere totally changed, unfortunately just as we all got going it was the intermission.
But while there was brief audience participation in the second half, it was not until requested that the audience rose to their feet and danced and clapped along for the last fifteen minutes.
It was certainly not the fault of the first class performers or the choice of music, but for some reason there was a lack of connection between the show and the audience. This stopped audience participating from the start, which is what a show like this really needs and the people all around me had come ready for. With a different audience on a different night the connection may be there, but last night there was no spark, which would have lifted the show from just being a music compilation to a great party night out.
With songs that include “Oh! What A Night”, “Y.M.C.A””Young Hearts Run Free”, and “ Ain’t No Stopping Us Now” there is something for everyone in the show, it just needs that extra spark to turn it in to a party, hopefully as the tour continues it will return.
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